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ESSAYS. 


PRINTED  BT  JONATHAN  PALMEB, 
POK 

MACMILLAN    AND    CO.    CAMBRIDGE. 

Ifonirott:  j.  w.  parker  and  son. 

©rforb  :    J.    H.   AND   JAS.    PARKER. 

(Ebinlmrgl^  :  edmonston  and  douglas. 
(^lasgoto :  james  maclehose. 
Ipnblin :  wm.  Robertson. 


EnoTMvfd.  by  S.  'Badx^ffp 


ESSAYS 


BY   THE    LATE 

GEOKGE   BEIMLEY,   M.A. 

LIBRARIAN   OF   TRINITY   COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE. 


EDITED   BY 

WILLIAM  GEOEGE  CLAEK,  M.A. 

FELLOW   AND   TtJTOE  OP  TRINITY  COLLEGE,   AND  PUBLIC   ORATOR   IN   THK 
UNIVERSITY   OP  CAMBRIDGE. 


MACMILLAN    AND    CO. 
LONDON:  J.  W.  PARKER  AND  SON. 

1858. 


[The  night  of  Translation  is  7-eserved.] 


TO    THE    REV. 


FREDEEICK    DENISON    MAURICE,    M.A. 


THE    EDITOR    INSCRIBES 


THIS   MEMORIAL   OF   THEIR   COMMON    FRIEND. 


Tkikitt  College,  Cambrioqk, 
April  22nd,  1858. 


PREFACE    BY    THE    EDITOR. 

George  Brimley  was  bom  at  Cambridge,  Decem- 
ber 29,  1819. 

From  the  age  of  eleven  to  sixteen  he  was  at 
school  at  Totteridge.  In  October,  1838,  he  com- 
menced residence  as  an  undergraduate  of  Trinity- 
College,  Cambridge,  where,  in  the  year  1841,  he  was 
elected  scholar.  Even  thus  early  his  health  began 
to  fail.  The  cruel  malady  which  ultimately  proved 
fatal,  had  already  fastened  upon  him.  Hence  he  was 
compelled  to  relinquish  his  purpose  of  becoming  a 
candidate  for  University  Honours;  hence  also  he  failed 
in  obtaining  a  College  Fellowship.  The  Master  and 
Seniors,  however,  showed  their  sense  of  his  merits 
by  conferring  upon  him  the  honourable  office  of 
Librarian.     From  this  time  he  continued  to  reside 


Vlll  FREFACE. 

within  the  walk  of  the  College,  where,  with  ample 
leisure  and  opportunities  for  study,  with  the  society  of 
tried  friends  and  in  the  neighbourhood  of  home,  his 
life  was  made  as  happy  as  life  can  be  without  health. 
For  the  last  six  years  he  contributed  articles 
regularly  to  the  Spectator  and  occasionally  also  to 
Fraser's  Magazine;  an  employment  which  suited 
him  under  the  circumstances  better  than  any  other, 
as  his  bodily  feebleness  forbade  him  to  attempt 
any  work  of  scope  and  difficulty  corresponding  to 
his  mental  powers.  To  this,  his  appointed  task,  he 
devoted  himself  with  conscientious  diligence.  Papers 
found  after  his  decease  show  the  pains  he  took 
to  qualify  himself  for  the  responsible  duty  of  a 
literary  judge  by  careful  study  and  elaborate  analysis 
of  the  books  he  was  about  to  criticise.  Undertaken 
in  this  spirit,  his  work  interested  and  amused  him, 
while  at  the  same  time  he  was  cheered  and  gratified 
by  the  attention  and  admiration  which  his  articles 
received.  In  this  way  also  he  came  to  reckon  among 
the  number  of  his  friends  some  of  the  most  eminent 
literary  men  of  their  time.  He  made  no  enemies, 
because,  though  he  never  hesitated  to  state  what  he 


FEU  FA  OR  IX 

believed  to  be  right,  his  own  sensitive  and  affectionate 
nature  guarded  him  from  the  wanton  infliction  of  pain 
upon  others.  Seldom  indeed  did  a  petulant  sarcasm 
or  an  inconsiderate  jest  fall  from  his  pen.  Belonging 
to  no  party  and  to  no  clique,  he  was  eminently  im- 
partial. 

With  one  exception — the  paper  on  Tennyson's 
Poems  which  appeared  in  the  Cambridge  Essays  for 
1855 — all  Mr.  Brimley's  writings  had  been  published 
anonymously,  and  after  his  decease  his  near  re- 
latives and  intimate  friends  were  unanimous  in  re- 
gretting that  one  who  had  devoted  his  whole  life 
and  his  best  gifts  to  literature  should  have  left  no 
adequate  memorial  of  himself.  Such  a  memorial 
we  trust  the  present  volume  will  be.  This  is  the 
primary  object  of  its  publication.  The  editors  and 
proprietors*  of  the  periodicals  above  mentioned  have 
given  to  the  scheme  not  merely  their  ready  sanction, 
but  also  hearty  sympathy  and  most  kind  assistance. 

It  was  not  without  due  deliberation  that  we  de- 
termined  upon   the  undertaking.       We  know  that 

*  One  of  these,  a  faithful  and  much  loved  friend,  E.  S.  Rintoul,  Esq., 
has  just  been  called  away  beyond  the  reach  of  our  thanks. 


CONTENTS. 

Page 

TENNYSON'S   POEMS 1 

WORDSWOKTH'S   POEMS          104 

POETRY    AND    CRITICISM        188 

THE    ANGEL    IN    THE    HOUSE                 209 

CARLYLE'S    LIFE    OF    STERLING            245 

"ESMOND" 268 

"MY   NOVEL"             270 

"BLEAK  HOUSE"       289 

"WESTWARD    HO!" 303 

WILSON'S    "NOCTES    AMBROSIAN^" 311 

COMTE'S    "POSITIVE    PHILOSOPHY" 317 


2  ESSAYS. 

a  comparison  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  genius  and  produc- 
tions with  those  of  Byron,  Shelley,  Scott,  Keats,  and 
Wordsworth,  would  have  abundant  interest  if  it  were 
executed  with  ability  and  judgment.  The  motives 
which,  in  spite  of  these  reasons,  have  induced  a  pre- 
ference for  the  former  and  easier  plan,  are  twofold. 
In  the  first  place,  the  writer  has  no  confidence  in  his 
own  ability  for  a  philosophical  estimate  of  the  essen- 
tial characteristics  of  the  poetry  of  the  first  and  second 
quarters  of  the  present  century ;  he  fears  running  into 
vague  generalities  and  dogmatical  assertions,  where 
there  is  not  space  for  testing  his  opinions  by  quotation 
and  analysis  of  detail  and  construction.  In  the  second 
place,  his  own  experience  leads  him  to  think  that 
analytical  criticism  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  poems  is  likely 
to  be  interesting  and  serviceable  to  a  large  class  of 
readers,  though,  of  course,  it  can  have  little  charm  for 
persons  who  by  talent  and  study  are  better  qualified 
than  he  is  to  write  such  a  criticism  themselves.  It 
has  often  happened  to  him  to  meet  with  persons  of 
imquestioned  talent  and  good  taste,  who  profess  them- 
selves unable  to  understand  why  Mr.  Tennyson  is 
placed  so  high  among  poets  as  his  admirers  are  in- 
clined to  place  him ;  who  say  they  find  him  obscure 
and  affected, — the  writer  for  a  class  rather  than  for 
a  people.     The  object  of  this  paper  is  to  show  that 


T^NKYSOIi'S  POEMS.  6 

we,  who  do  admire  him,  have  a  reason  for  our  faith ; 
that  we  are  not  actuated  by  blind  preference  for  the 
man  who  echoes  merely  our  own  class  feelings  and 
opinions  in  forms  that  suit  our  particular  tastes  and 
modes  of  thought, — but  that  Mr.  Tennyson  is  a  poet 
of  large  compass,  of  profound  insight,  of  finished  skill. 
We  find  him  possessing  the  clearest  insight  into  our 
modern  life,  one  who  discerns  its  rich  poetical  re- 
sources, who  tells  us  what  we  are  and  may  be ;  how 
we  can  live  free,  joyous,  and  harmonious  lives ;  what 
grand  elements  of  thought,  feeling,  and  action  lie 
round  us;  what  a  field  there  is  for  the  various  ac- 
tivities fermenting  within  us.  We  do  not  call  him 
a  Shakspeare,  or  even  a  Chaucer;  but  what  Shak- 
speare  and  Chaucer  did  for  the  ages  they  lived  in,  Mr. 
Tennyson  is  doing  for  our  age,  after  his  measure.  He 
is  showing  it  to  us  as  an  age  in  which  an  Englishman 
may  live  a  man's  life,  and  be  neither  a  mere  man  of 
business,  nor  a  mere  man  of  pleasure,  but  may  find  in 
his  affections,  studies,  business,  and  relaxations  scope 
for  his  spiritual  faculties. 

The  main  difficulty  of  the  task  has  lain  in  the  fact 
that  the  poems  of  Mr.  Tennyson  are  never  repetitions, 
in  the  great  variety  both  of  form  and  matter  they  ex- 
hibit. It  has  been  impossible  to  do  without  special 
mention  of  a  great  number  of  poems,  and  the  result  is 
b2 


4  ASSAYS. 

necessarily  somewhat  fragmentary  and  discursive.  It 
turns  out  rather  a  commentary  than  an  essay ;  hut  its 
ohject  will  he  answered,  and  the  expectations  of  the 
writer  amply  satisfied,  if  it  helps  only  a  few  persons  to 
enjoy  Tennyson  more  than  they  have  hitherto  done, 
and  to  understand  better  the  ground  of  the  claim  that 
is  made  for  him  of  belonging  to  the  great  poets. 
Little  more  has  been  attempted  with  the  three  longest 
poems.  The  Princess,  In  Memorianij  and  Maud,  than 
to  place  the  reader  in  the  true  point  of  view,  and  ex- 
amine certain  prejudices  against  them  which  have 
obtained  currency  among  us.  Indeed,  that  was  all 
that  was  absolutely  necessary,  as  the  hostile  opinions 
have  seldom  been  expressed  unaccompanied  by  ad- 
miration of  the  beauties  of  detail  in  which  these  poems 
abound. 

Mr.  Tennyson  published  his  first  volume  of  poems 
in  1830,*  when  he  was  an  undergraduate  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge.  It  must  always  possess  con- 
siderable interest  for  those  who  read  and  admire  his 
maturer  productions;  but,  with  few  exceptions,  the 
poems  it  contains  owe  their  main  attraction  to  the 
fact  that  they  are  the  earliest  efforts  of  one  who  has 

•  There  is,  we  believe,  an  earlier  volume  of  poems  published  by 
Alfred  and  Charles  Tennyson,  but  we  have  never  seen  a  copy;  and 
the  volume  of  1830  is  sufficiently  juvenile  for  a  starting-point. 


TUNNYSON'S  POEMS.  5 

gained  a  position  of  which  they  afforded  no  certain 
promise.  Many  of  them  are  exquisitely  musical — 
great  command  of  the  resources  of  metre  is  manifest — 
and  a  richness  of  phraseology  everywhere  abounds. 
But  substantial  interest  they  certainly  want,  because 
they  present  no  phenomena  of  nature  or  of  human 
life  with  force  and  distinctness,  tell  no  story,  express 
no  passion  or  clear  thought,  depict  no  person,  thing, 
or  scene  that  the  mind  can  recognise  for  a  reality. 
They  are  as  far  as  possible  from  what  might  be  ex- 
pected of  one  who  describes  the  poet  as 

Dowered  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scom  of  scorn, 
The  love  of  love, 

and  assigns  to  him  the  ministry  of  WiSDOM,  of  whom 
he  writes — 

No  sword 
Of  wrath  her  right  arm  hurled, 
But  one  poor  poet's  scroll,  and  with  his  word 
She  shook  the  world. 

So  far  from  shaking  the  world,  they  are  incapable 
of  raising  emotions  in  a  solitary  heart;  so  far  from 
being  instruments  of  wisdom,  they  scarcely  reach  the 
altitudes  of  ordinary  sense.  Take  the  first  poem  of 
the  series,  for  example,  Clarihel.  It  is  not  quite 
certain  what  the  precise  feeling  of  the  melody  is, — 
whether  it  expresses  a  grief  that,  finding  no  consola- 


6  USSAYS. 

tion  in  its  memories  or  hopes,  is  deepened  by  the 
sweet  sights  and  sounds  of  the  quiet  churchyard ;  or  a 
grief  that  finds  in  these  a  soothing  influence.  Taking, 
however,  the  latter  as  the  more  prohable  theory, 
though  no  poem  ought  to  admit  of  such  a  doubt,  how 
singularly  this  treatment  of  the  subject  eliminates  all 
that  is  most  striking  and  affecting  in  it.  If  we  mourn 
the  early  removal  of  one  who  was  dear  and  lovely  in 
her  life,  and  whose  memory  lendg  a  softening  charm 
to  the  spot  where  her  body  lies,  it  is  on  her  gentle  and 
affectionate  nature,  on  her  grace  and  beauty,  that  the 
mind  loves  to  linger  in  visiting  her  grave ;  it  is  these 
that  make  the  place  interesting,  the  recollection  of 
these  that  consoles  us  who  are  deprived  of  her  sweet 
presence.  Or  if  the  mind  takes  a  loftier  flight,  it 
looks  away  from  the  past,  and  from  the  grave,  to  that 
bright  world  of  spirits,  in  which  the  beauty  and  ex- 
cellence that  were  so  soon  blighted  here  reach  their 
consummate  flower,  and  bloom  through  eternity  in  the 
still  garden  of  souls.  But  Mr.  Tennyson  says  nothing 
of  all  this ;  his  memory  of  the  dead  forms  only  a 
medium  through  which  the  living  sights  and  sounds 
of  natTire  round  the  grave  are  harmonized  in  tone  with 
his  own  sadness,  while  the  stillness  and  sweetness  of 
the  scene  soothe  his  sorrow  into  a  calm  repose ;  the 
quiet  beauty  of  the  churchyard  blends  with  the  image 


TUNNTSOIPS  FOEMS.  7 

of  the  lost  one,  and  he  thinks  of  her  hereafter  in  un- 
utterable peace,  amid  the  songs  of  birds,  the  voice 
of  the  solemn  oak-tree,  the  slow  regular  changes  from 
mom  to  noon,  from  noon  to  midnight.  This  is  to 
treat  human  life  from  its  least  impressive  point  of 
view, — to  feel  its  sorrows  and  consolations  in  their 
least  substantial  and  abiding  power.  It  is,  however, 
a  real  point  of  view ;  and  both  sorrow  and  consola- 
tion will  sometimes  assume  this  form  spontaneously, 
though  seldom  so  completely  to  the  exclusion  of  more 
direct  and  powerful  considerations,  as  in  the  poem  of 
Clarihel. 

The  poems  inscribed  with  the  names  of  women 
would  furnish  other  examples  of  this  perverse,  unreal 
treatment  of  subjects  capable  of  interesting  the  sym- 
pathies. There  is  in  none  of  them  any  presentation 
of  those  distinct  traits  by  which  we  recognise  human 
beings,  no  action  or  speech,  no  description  of  mind, 
person,  or  history,  but  a  series  of  epithets  and  similes 
which  convey  nothing,  because  we  have  not  the 
image  of  the  thing  which  they  are  intended  to  illus- 
trate. Other  poems  are  uninteresting  from  their  sub- 
jects, such  as  The  Merman  and  Mermaidj  The  Sea 
Fairies,  The  Krahen,  The  Dying  Swan,  &c.  No 
music  of  verse,  no  pictorial  power,  will  enable  a 
reader  to  care  for  such  creatures  of  the  fancy  j  other- 


O  £SSATS. 

wise,  both  music  and  pictorial  power  are  there.     How 
clear  the  painting  is  here — 

Slow  sailed  the  weary  mariners,  and  saw 
Between  the  green  brink  and  the  running  foam, 
White  limbs  unrobed  in  a  crystal  air, 
Sweet  faces,  rounded  arms,  and  bosoms  prest 
To  little  harps  of  gold. 

How  musical  and  vivid — 

There  would  be  neither  moon  nor  star, 
But  the  wave  would  make  music  above  us  afar; 
Low  thunder  and  light,  in  the  magic  night, 
Neither  moon  nor  star. 

Though  such  subjects  would  seem  wilfiillj  chosen  to 
avoid  reality  and  human  interest,  they  show  through- 
out great  power  of  painting  scenery,  and  of  associat- 
ing it  with  the  feelings  of  animated  beings ;  and  are 
in  fact  pictures  of  peculiar  character,  in  which  the 
objects  grouped  and  the  qualities  attributed  to  them 
are  viewed  through  the  medium  of  the  beings  associ- 
ated with  the  scene.  Thus  they  become  dramatically 
descriptive,  and  display  the  germ  of  a  principle  of 
landscape  painting  which  Mr.  Tennyson  has  in  his 
later  poems  brought  to  great  perfection,  and  largely 
employed.  The  principle  consists  in  a  combination 
of  landscape  and  figures  in  which  the  landscape  is 
not  merely  background  to  the  figures,  or  the  figures 
animated  objects  in  the  landscape,  but  the  two  are 


TIlNNYSOirS  POEMS.  if 

dynamicallj  related,  so  that  the  landscape  is  de- 
scribed as  seen  and  felt  by  the  persons  of  the  scene, 
under  the  influence  of  some  emotion  which  selects 
objects  congenial  to  its  own  moods,  and  modifies  their 
generic  appearances, — if  the  word  generic  may  be 
used  to  express  the  appearance  objects  present  to 
a  mind  in  its  ordinary,  unexcited  state.  And  thus 
we  get  a  landscape  which  is  at  once  ideal  and  real 
— a  collection  of  actual  images  of  external  nature, 
grouped  and  coloured  by  a  dominant  idea;  and  the 
whole  composition  derives  from  this  principle  a  har- 
mony and  a  force  of  expression  which,  whether  the 
principal  aim  be  landscape  painting  or  the  delinea- 
tion of  human  emotion,  produce  that  dramatic  unity 
demanded  in  works  of  art.  Employed  as  the  prin- 
ciple is  in  this  early  volume  upon  scenery  that  is 
strange  and  upon  emotions  that  are  not  human,  it  yet 
shows  its  power  of  producing  a  picture  throughout 
harmoniously  conceived,  and  evidences  a  capacity  for 
concentration  that  only  needs  substantially  interesting 
material  to  work  upon. 

The  poem  which,  better  than  any  other  in  the  first 
series,  exhibits  the  power  of  concentrating  the  imagi- 
nation upon  the  subject,  to  the  exclusion  of  an  ex- 
traneous and  discordant  train  of  thought,  and  at  the 
same  time  furnishes  an  admirable  instance  of  dramatic 


10  £SSATS. 

landscape  painting,  or  passion  reflecting  itself  on  land- 
cape,  is  Mariana.  As  the  physiologists  tell  us  that 
the  organs  of  the  higher  animals  are  found  in  an  un- 
developed state  in  those  of  lower  type,  we  may  look 
upon  this  poem  as  a  foreshadowing  of  a  kind  of  poetry 
that,  in  the  later  volumes,  will  he  found  in  full  per- 
fection. In  Mariana,  the  landscape  details  are  pre- 
sented with  the  minute  distinctness  with  which  they 
would  strike  upon  the  morbid  sensibility  of  a  woman 
abandoned  to  lonely  miseiy,  whose  attention  is  dis- 
tracted by  no  cares,  pleasures,  or  satisfied  affections. 
To  the  painter  in  search  of  the  picturesque,  or  a  happy 
observer,  seeing  the  sunny  side  of  everything,  or 
a  utilitarian  looking  for  the  productive  resources  of 
the  scene,  the  whole  aspect  of  the  fen-scenery  would 
be  totally  different.  But  selected,  grouped,  and  quali- 
fied by  epithets,  as  the  natural  objects  of  the  landscape 
are  in  the  poem,  they  tell  of  the  years  of  pain  and 
weariness  associated  with  them  in  the  mind  of  the 
wretched  Mariana,  and  produce  an  intense  impression 
of  hopeless  suffering,  which  no  other  treatment  of 
the  single  figure  could  have  produced.  The  minute 
enumeration  of  detail  would  be  a  fault  in  a  mere  land- 
scape-artist, whose  object  was  to  describe  a  natural 
scene.  It  is  an  excellence  here,  because  no  other 
means  could  so  forcibly  mark  the  isolation,  the  morbid 


TENNYSON'S  FOEMS.  11 

sensitiveness,  and  the  mind  vacant  of  all  but  misery ; 
because,  used  thus,  it  becomes  eminently  dramatic, — 
the  landscape  expresses  the  passion  of  the  mind  which 
contemplates  it,  and  the  passion  gives  unity  and  moral 
interest  to  the  landscape.  There  is  not,  throughout 
the  poem,  a  single  epithet  which  belongs  to  the  objects 
irrespective  of  the  story  with  which  the  scene  is  asso- 
ciated, or  a  single  detail  introduced  which  does  not 
aid  the  general  impression  of  the  poem.  They  mark 
either  the  pain  with  which  Mariana  looks  at  things, 
or  the  long  neglect  to  which  she  has  been  abandoned, 
or  some  peculiarity  of  time  and  place  which  marks  the 
morbid  minuteness  of  her  attention  to  objects.  If  the 
moss  is  hlackened,  the  flower-pots  thickly  crusted ^  the 
nails  rusted^  the  sheds  broken^  the  latch  clinking^  the 
thatch  weeded  and  \corn,  not  one  of  these  epithets 
but  tells  of  long  neglect,  and  prolongs  the  key-note  of 
sad  and  strange  loneliness.     If 

She  could  not  look  on  the  siceet  heaven, 
Either  at  mom  or  eventide ; — 

this  epithet,  startling  at  first  from  its  apparent  in- 
trusion of  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  the  heaven  is 
sweety  heightens  the  impression  of  that  tear-blinded 
misery  to  which  the  light  in  its  softest  mildness  is 
intolerable.  Even  at  night,  when  the  sky  is  enveloped 
in  '  thickest  dark,'  when  the  flats  are  '  glooming,'  she 


12  SSSATS. 

can  only  glance  across  the  casement  window.  Her 
sleep  is  broken  by  sounds  that  painfully  recal  the 
desolate  scene  of  daylight;  her  dreams  are  forlorn, 
and  stamped  with  the  hopeless  monotony  of  her  lot ; 
and  she  wakes  to  shudder  in  a  cold,  windy,  cheer- 
less mom.  The  moat  that  surrounds  her  prison  is  no 
bright  sparkling  stream ;  clustered  marsh  mosses  creep 
over  its  blackened  and  sleeping  waters,  stifling  with 
their  loathsome  death  in  life  the  most  active  and  joyous 
of  nature's  visible  powers,  and  giving  to  the  captive 
a  striking  emblem  of  her  own  choked  and  stagnant 
existence.  The  poplar  hard  by  is  never  in  repose, 
shaking  like  a  sick  man  in  a  fever ;  for  leagues  round 
spreads  the  '  level  waste,  the  rounding  grey,'  with  no 
object,  no  variety,  to  interest  the  attention.  What 
moves,  moves  always,  harassing  the  nerves, — what  is 
at  rest  seems  dead,  striking  cold  the  heart.  It  is 
needless  to  pursue  this  analysis  throughout  a  poem 
so  familiar.  The  effect  is  felt  by  the  reader  with 
hardly  a  consciousness  of  the  skill  of  the  writer,  or 
of  the  intense  dramatic  concentration  implied  in  such 
employment  of  language.  If  expression  were  the 
highest  aim  of  poetry,  Mariana  in  the  Moated  Grange 
must  be  counted  among  the  most  perfect  of  poems,  in 
spite  of  an  occasional  weakness  of  phrase.  But  almost 
perfect  as  the  execution  is,  the  subject  is  presented  too 


TENIfYSOIi'S  POEMS.  13 

purely  as  a  picture  of  hopeless,  unrelieved  suffering,  to 
deserve  the  name  of  a  great  poem.  The  suffering  is, 
so  to  speak,  distinct  and  individual,  but  the  woman 
who  suffers  is  vague  and  indistinct;  we  have  no 
interest  in  her,  because  we  know  nothing  about  her 
storj  or  herself  in  detail ;  she  is  not  a  wronged  and 
deserted  woman,  but  an  abstract  generalization  of 
wronged  and  deserted  womanhood ;  all  the  individu- 
ality is  bestowed  upon  the  landscape  in  which  she  is 
placed.  This  again,  as  was  said  of  Clarihel^  is  to 
view  human  life  from  its  least  affecting  and  impres- 
sive side. 

The  task  that  lies  before  us  will  not  allow  us  to 
dwell  longer  on  the  poems  of  the  first  volume.  Taken 
as  a  whole,  they  indicate  that  Mr.  Tennyson  set  out 
with  the  determination  to  be  no  copyist,  and  to  ab- 
stain from  setting  to  verse  the  mere  personal  emotions 
of  his  own  actual  life.  Even  the  few  poems  that  did 
express  personal  emotion  he  has  excluded  from  his 
collected  edition. 

To  hold  converse  ■with  all  forms 
Of  the  manysided  mind, — 

to  present  not  feelings,  but  the  objects  which  excite 
feelings,  must  have  been  very  distinctly  his  aim  at  this 
period.  And  it  is  worth  noticing,  that  though  he 
lived  at  this  time  in  the  centre  of  the  most  distin- 


14  JESS  AYS. 

guished  young  men  of  liis  University,  his  poems 
present  but  faint  evidence  of  this.  He  seems  to  have 
deliberately  abstained  from  any  attempt  to  paint  the 
actual  human  life  about  him,  or  to  give  a  poetical  form 
to  such  impressions  of  real  life  as  he  might  have  ob- 
tained from  reading.  No  one  who  knows  the  men 
with  whom  he  lived,  or  who  has  read  his  later  poems, 
can  doubt  that  the  sympathies  with  human  emotion, 
the  noble  views  of  human  character  and  destiny,  that 
distinguish  his  mature  poems,  must  have  then  existed 
in  the  man;  and  we  must  therefore  infer  that  he  did 
not  feel  his  mastery  over  the  instruments  of  his  art 
sufficient  to  justify  him  in  delineating  human  life. 
His  knowledge  of  the  modes  in  which  emotion  and 
character  manifest  themselves,  must  have  appeared  to 
him  too  imperfect  to  attempt  their  exhibition  in  rhyth- 
mical forms — these  forms  being  no  mere  conventional 
arrangement  of  words  to  please  the  ear,  but  the  ex- 
pression of  the  delight  of  the  poet  at  the  beauty  and 
completeness  of  the  pictures  vividly  present  to  his 
imagination;  and  in  their  highest  symbolic  value, 
representing  the  poet's  insight  into  the  moral  meaning 
of  life,  and  his  vision  of  a  perfect  order  and  harmony 
in  the  universe, — of  the  triumph  of  good  over  evil. 
To  attain  skill  in  the  employment  of  rhythmical  forms, 
— to  sing  nobly  and  naturally,  to  form  a  style  capable 


TUNKTSON'S  POEMS.  15 

of  musically  expressing  his  ideas,  as  ripening  intellect 
and  enlarged  experience  should  supply  him  with  ideas 
demanding  musical  expression,  may  be  set  down  as 
the  aim,  more  or  less  conscious,  of  this  first  poetical 
series.  Probably  to  the  avoidance  of  subjects  beyond 
his  powers,  to  the  careful  elaboration  of  his  style,  the 
world  may  be  indebted  for  the  perfection  of  his  later 
poems.  Had  he  begun  with  Balder  or  Festus,  he 
would  not  have  afterwards  produced  The  Morte  d' Ar- 
thur, The  Gardener  s  Daughter^  Locksley  Hall,  and 
In  Memoriam.  Mariana  in  the  Moated  Grange  marks 
the  highest  point  of  the  first  flight,  and  in  that  the 
power  of  the  artist  is  shown,  in  the  complete  presenta- 
tion of  a  limited  and  peculiar  view  of  the  subject, 
rather  than  in  the  ethical  or  poetical  value  of  the  con- 
ception. 

Mr.  Tennyson's  second  volume  bears  the  date  of 
1833.  It  contains  some  poems  which  their  author  has 
not  thought  worthy  of  preservation,  and  some  others 
which  take  their  place  among  his  collected  poems, 
considerably  altered.  But  characterised  as  a  whole,  in 
comparison  with  the  first  volume,  it  marks  a  surprising 
advance,  both  in  conception  and  execution.  Mariana, 
and  perhaps  Recollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  are 
the  only  poems  of  the  first  series  that  would  have  had 
a  chance  of  being  remembered  for  their  own  merits, 


16  ass  AYS. 

and  they  are  both  admirably  executed,  rather  than 
interesting.  But  in  the  second  volume,  The  Miller  s 
Daughter,  ^none,  The  Palace  of  Art,  The  May 
Queen,  and  The  Lotos  Eaters  would,  even  in  their 
original  forms,  have  been  enduring  memorials  of  a 
rare  poetic  faculty.  In  The  Miller^s  Daughter  and 
The  May  Queen  the  affections  of  our  every-day  life, 
and  the  scenery  with  which  they  associate  themselves, 
become  for  the  first  time  the  subject  of  Mr.  Tenny- 
son's art;  and  we  appreciate  the  important  principle 
of  treating  landscape  as  dynamically  related  to  emotion 
when  we  see  it  applied  to  feelings  which  powerfully 
affect  us,  and  with  whose  action  we  are  sufficiently 
familiar  to  sympathize.  In  the  two  Marianas  this 
principle  is  carried  thoroughly  out,  but  under  con- 
ditions which  interfere  with  our  hearty  enjoyment  of 
the  poems.  Partly,  no  doubt,  the  contemplation  of 
unmixed  pain  that  serves  no  disciplinal  aim  is  painful, 
however  exquisitely  it  may  be  delineated,  and  hardly 
consistent  with  the  delight  we  expect  from  every  work 
of  art;  but  the  absence  from  both  the  Marianas  of 
any  but  the  faintest  traces  of  the  previous  story,  and 
of  any  traits  of  individual  character,  has  more  to  do 
with  this  want  of  popular  interest.  They  are,  as  was 
said  before,  not  women  whose  history  and  character 
we  can  realize  sufficiently  to   care  about  them,  but 


TENNTSOIPS  FOEMS.  17 

abstract  types ;  and  the  consequence  of  this  is,  that 
the  landscape  element  predominates  too  much.  In- 
stead of  serving  simplj  to  reflect  and  render  legible 
the  miseiy  of  the  women,  it  becomes  itself  the  prin- 
cipal object,  and  the  women  are  lost  in  its  details. 
Besides,  we  feel  that  no  human  life  could  possibly 
endure  a  loneliness  and  wretchedness  so  unmixed 
as  are  depicted,  and  that  these  pictures  are  not  true 
because  they  leave  out  elements  essential  to  the 
real  drama,  which  they  present  in  part.  But  in 
TJie  Miller  s  Daughter  there  is  a  story  which  tells 
the  leading  incidents  of  a  life, — there  are  real  per- 
sons presented,  with  their  distinguishing  traits ;  and 
the  scenery,  though  intimately  blended  with  the  life, 
and  entering  as  an  indispensable  element  in  the 
story,  because  indissolubly  connected  with  the  me- 
mories of  the  speaker,  becomes  subordinate,  and  no 
longer  overrides  the  human  interest.  And  it  is  only 
in  this  way,  when  emotion  is  presented  in  connec- 
tion with  the  incidents  out  of  which  it  rises,  and 
with  the  persons  who  experience  it,  and  when  the 
scenery  is  made  to  reflect,  not  simple  emotion,  but 
the  emotion  of  distinct  persons,  that  an  interesting 
poem  can  be  written,  and  the  aflfections  of  the  reader 
sincerely  touched.  So  long  as  the  emotion  is  pre- 
sented without   a  distinct  conception  of  the  person 

c 


18  ESSAYS. 

experiencing  it,  and  the  cause  why,  and  the  scenery 
is  presented  through  the  medium  of  this  abstract 
emotion,  as  it  may  he  called,  the  skill  of  the  artist 
may  be  admired,  but  he  will  not  be  a  popular  poet ; 
and  a  poet  who  does  not  write  at  the  heart  of  a 
people  is  no  poet  at  all.  The  Miller  s  Daughter 
and  The  May  Queen  at  once  established  Mr.  Ten- 
nyson's capacity  for  becoming  a  popular  poet,  and 
made  him  one  within  a  limited  circle.  Their  charm 
consists  in  the  real  interest  of  lives  moved  by  the 
simplest  affections  and  the  simplest  enjoyments,  and 
in  the  skill  with  which  these  lives  are  presented  as 
complete  dramas,  though  each  poem  is  extended  in 
time  only  through  an  ordinary  conversation.  It  is 
in  each  case  a  life  reviewed  by  the  speaker  under 
the  emotion  that  belongs  to  a  particular  moment; 
and  the  golden  calm  that  rests  upon  the  one,  and 
the  sweet  innocence  that  shines  through  the  other, 
belong  naturally  to  the  circumstances  under  which 
the  reminiscences  are  uttered.  Nothing  of  truth  is 
sacrificed  to  ideality,  but  such  ideality  as  gives  both 
unity  of  colouring  throughout,  and  guides  the  selec- 
tion of  details,  is  the  true  result  of  the  emotion 
of  each  speaker.  Thus  the  charm  of  completeness, 
which  is  the  aim  of  narrative,  is  united  with  the 
power  over  the  sympathies  possessed  by  the  spon- 


TUNWrSON'S  POEMS.       '  19 

taneous  outpouring  of  feeling ;  and  a  lyrical  flow  of 
emotion  is  made  to  hold  in  solution,  as  it  were, 
the  constituents  of  a  drama  or  a  novel. 

But  it  must  not  be  supposed,  because  these  two 
poems  have  been  contrasted  with  the  Marianas  and 
shown  to  have  more  power  over  the  affections,  more 
of  the   elements  necessary   to   popularity,  that  the 
Marianas  are  failures  of  the  poet  to  work  out  his 
own  intentions.     Neither  Mariana  professes  to  be  a 
tale  of  human  passion,  with  its  alternations  of  joy 
and  sorrow.     Had   the  excitement  of  pity,  or  any 
mere  emotion,  been  the  object  of  the  poet,  we  must 
think  him  obtuse  not  to  know  that  his  mode  of  pre- 
senting the  tale  would  but  feebly  answer  his  purpose. 
We  see  by  The  Miller  s  Daughter  and  the  May  Queen 
that  he  can  move  us  to  tears,  or  fill  us  with  serene 
delight,  if  such  were  his  object.     But  if  we  revert 
to  the   second  Mariana,   transported  to   an  Italian 
landscape,  we  see  her  as  in  a  picture,  lovely  in  her 
lonely  wretchedness ;    we  see  the  landscape  round 
her  ministering  torture  to  her  heart  and  senses,  that 
long  for  quiet  sound  and  shadow.     We  go  with  her 
in  her  dream  to  her  breezy  mountain   home, — we 
wake  with  her  to  the  torturing  glare  of  the  blinding 
noon-day  heat, — we  breathe  with  her  as  she  leans 
at  evening  on  her  balcony,  while  Hesper  sheds  divine 
C2 


20  JESSATS. 

solace  on  her  soul,  and  coolness  and  soft  distant 
sounds  bring  a  semblance  of  repose.  In  that  dream 
of  home  and  of  the  past,  in  the  recurrence  of  a  kind 
of  comfort  in  the  cool  evening,  in  her  prayer  to  the 
Madonna,  and  even  in  the  distinct  picture  of  her 
beauty,  we  recognise  the  superiority  to  the  first 
Mariana,  and  the  growth  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  genius. 
But  one  touch  of  grief  that  should  connect  itself 
with  a  definite  incident,  or  a  person  brought  clearly 
before  the  mind,  would  excite  more  pity,  more  affec- 
tion to  her,  and  more  indignation  against  her  false 
lover.  She  would  walk  out  of  her  frame,  and  be- 
come a  woman  with  a  history  and  with  relations 
to  the  common  world,  and  our  emotional  sympathies 
would  at  once  flow  forth  towards  her.  At  present 
it  is  the  perceptive  faculties  that  are  occupied  with 
her,  which  are  thronged  with  images  making  up 
a  picture.  No  doubt  the  picture  is  intelligible 
enough  for  the  imagination  of  the  reader  to  supply 
the  history  without  difficulty  in  its  general  character, 
but  the  mind  has  no  strong  grasp  of  what  is  appre- 
hended only  in  its  general  character ;  and  the  poem, 
as  it  stands  before  us,  remains  a  beautiful  picture, 
rather  than  an  affecting  love  story,  and  this  though 
it  is  the  crisis  of  a  thousand  affecting  love  stories. 
If  Mr.  Tennyson  had   chosen  to  stamp  that  indivi- 


TUNNYSOX'S  FOEMS.         '  21 

duality  of  character  and  incident  which  gives  its 
charm  to  life,  and  to  the  fiction  which  aims  at  pre- 
senting real  life,  we  have  evidence  that  he  could, 
at  this  time,  have  done  it.  Instead  of  that  he  tells 
us  no  more  of  his  Italian  Mariana  than  if  she  were 
painted  for  us  in  a  picture  by  Millais,  except  that 
the  poem  gives  us  changes  of  time  and  scenery  as 
a  compensation  for  that  vividness  of  presentation 
denied  to  words.  It  is  the  development  from  the 
painter  to  the  poet, — from  the  man  who  can  make 
beautiful  pictures  to  the  man  who  can  present  human 
life,  with  all  its  activities  of  noble  thought  and  pure 
affection,  and,  in  presenting  it,  can  justify  its  being 
to  the  heart  and  reason,  that  marks  Mr.  Tennyson's 
poetic  course. 

But  through  the  greater  portion  of  the  second 
volume  the  painter  predominates.  We  have  no  poems 
to  place  by  the  side  of  The  Miller's  Daughter  and 
The  May  Queen.  The  Lady  of  8haloU,  founded  on 
an  incident  in  King  Arthur,  is  so  treated  as  to 
eliminate  all  the  human  interest  of  the  original  story, 
and  the  process  gives  us  a  being  whose  existence 
passes  without  emotion,  without  changes,  without 
intelligible  motive  for  living  on,  without  hope  or 
fear  here  or  hereafter.  Nothing  remains  but  the  faint 
shadow  of  humanity,  from  which  life,  and  motion, 


22  ASSAYS. 

and  sulDstance  have  departed.  All  this  price  to  gain 
perfect  serenity,  and  some  new  phase  of  being  for 
the  reflective  faculty  to  make  what  it  can  of, — per- 
haps to  cause  our  human  heart  to  beat  the  stronger 
for  reaction !  Considered  merely  as  a  picture,  The 
Lady  of  Shalott  has  a  serene  beauty,  and  clear  land- 
scape features,  that  only  make  one  more  angry  that 
so  much  skill  in  presenting  objects  should  be  em- 
ployed upon  a  subject  that  can  only  amuse  the 
imagination. 

The  poem  to  which,  in  subsequent  editions,  the 
name  of  Fatima  is  given,  cannot  be  charged  with 
want  of  passion;  but,  like  the  Marianas^  it  leaves 
the  reader  too  much  to  supply  in  the  way  of  story 
and  person.  It  would  be  doing  it  injustice  to  call 
it  the  concentrated  essence  of  Byron's  Gulnares, 
Zuleikas,  et  id  genus  omne;  for  Bjrron  never  reached 
any  point  near  this  'withering  might'  of  love.  But 
as  it  stands,  it  is  too  fragmentary, — a  mere  study, 
though  so  finished  as  to  make  one  long  for  the  poem 
which  should  have  developed  it.  One  would  think 
that  Mr.  Tennyson  must  have  been  smitten  with 
a  determinate  aversion  to  popularity,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  have  resolved  to  show  what  a  power  of  intense 
passionate  expression  he  was  master  of,  when  he 
left  such  a  poem  without  beginning,  middle,  or  end. 


THJf^XYSON'S  FOEMS.  23 

Perhaps,  however,  in  his  opinion,  this  overmaster- 
ing Eastern  passion,  that,  like  a  fever,  dries  up  and 
exhausts  mind  and  body,  has  no  phases  capable  of 
forming  into  a  story  or  drama.  It  may  be  the  very 
essence  of  this  type  of  love  that  it  should  not  rise 
by  degrees,  by  half-confidences,  by  all  the  pleasant 
stages  of  Western  love,  but  burst  forth  at  once  into 
full  consciousness,  and  know  no  changes  but  the 
fiercest  extremes  of  tenderness  and  exhaustion.  In 
that  case,  its  true  poetic  expression  would  be  given 
in  the  passionate  utterance  of  desire  strained  to  agony ; 
and,  be  that  as  it  may,  the  effect  of  such  passion, 
in  morbidly  heightening  the  nervous  sensibility,  and 
giving  a  painful  intensity  to  all  impressions  on  the 
senses,  is  indicated  with  marvellous  force  of  ima- 
gination, and  rendered  into  language  and  rhythm 
which  pour  forth  like  a  flood  of  lava  from  a  volcano 
in  eruption. 

The  pre-eminence  of  the  painter  reappears  in 
JEnone.  If  the  poet's  object  had  been  to  tell  a 
moving  story  of  love,  and  wrong,  and  grief,  he  would 
not  have  chosen  for  his  heroine  a  mythological 
nymph,  nor  have  thrown  his  incidents  back  to  the 
siege  of  Troy,  and  among  beings  whose  existence 
is  no  longer  believed  in.  As  little  is  his  purpose, 
in  treating  Greek  mythology,  akin  to  Shelley's,  who 


24  ESSAYS. 

clothes  in  its  forms  a  sentimental  nature-philosophy, 
and  a  pantheistical  worship.  jEnone  is  more  akin 
in  spirit  to  Endymion  and  Hyperion;  but  its  verse 
is  more  majestic,  and  its  luxuriant  pictorial  richness 
more  controlled  by  definite  conception,  more  articu- 
lated by  fine  drawing,  than  even  the  latter  and 
greater  of  Keats's  two  poems.  Gorgeous  mountain 
and  figure  painting  stand  here  as  the  predominant 
aim  as  clearly  as  in  any  picture  by  Titian  or  Turner  j 
only  poetry  will  not  lose  her  prerogative  of  speech, 
and  will  paint  her  mountains  and  her  figures  in  a 
medium  of  passion  to  which  the  artist  upon  canvas 
vainly  aspires.  Round  Ida  and  its  valleys,  round 
Troas  and  its  windy  citadel,  -^none  can  pour  the 
enchantment  of  her  memories  of  love  and  grief.  To 
her  can  the  naked  goddesses — painted  as  Rubens 
could  not  paint  them, — life,  motion,  and  floating 
lights — utter  celestial  music,  and  grand  thoughts  ally 
themselves  with  splendid  pictures.  If  the  wish  will 
force  its  way,  that  Greek  mythology  might  be  left 
at  peace  in  its  tomb,  and  that  a  harp  so  strung  to 
passion  and  to  thought  should  pour  the  spell  of  its 
music  upon  a  theme  in  which  the  imagination  should 
harmonize  and  interpret  the  life  of  the  men  and 
women  about  us,  we  can  but  answer,  that  the  deeper 
music  will  yet  beat  itself  out, — that  this  is  but  pre- 


TENNYS02PS  POEMS.  25 

liide,  showing  the  artist's  power  and  perfecting  his 
hand. 

The  Lotos  Eaters  carries  Tennyson's  tendency  to 
pure  asstheticism  to  an  extreme  point.  It  is  picture 
and  music,  and  nothing  more.  The  writer  did  not 
suppose  he  was  writing  Hamlet^  or  solving  '^  the 
riddle  of  the  painful  earth."  Nor  must  we  go  to 
the  work  with  that  demand  upon  it.  If  music  and 
picture — the  feelings  of  imaginary  beings,  in  a  pure 
region  of  imagination,  perfectly  presented  in  rhyth- 
mical language  that  takes  the  formative  impulse  of 
the  feeling,  as  falling  water  does  of  the  forces  that 
draw  it  into  a  flashing  curve — have  no  charm  for 
any  mind,  that  mind  can  find  no  interest  in  The 
Lotos  Eaters.  To  attempt  to  treat  it  as  an  allegory, 
which  figures  forth  the  tendency  to  abandon  the 
battle  of  life,  to  retire  from  a  fruitless,  ever-renewed 
struggle, — to  read  it  as  we  should  read  The  PilgrirrCs 
Progress,  and  look  out  for  facts  of  actual  experience 
which  answer  to  its  images,  is  as  monstrous  and 
perverse  as  it  would  be  to  test  a  proposition  of  geo- 
metry by  its  rhythm  and  imagery.  A  mood  of 
feeling,  of  course,  it  represents,  and  feeling  depen- 
dent on,  and  directed  to  distinct  objects, — in  this 
latter  respect,  alone,  differing  from  music.  We  may, 
of  course,  too,  apply  the  mood  of  feeling  thus  de- 


26  ESSAYS. 

picted  to  the  real  events  of  life,  and  translate  it  into 
the  actual  language  of  men  under  the  influence  of 
'  mild-eyed  melancholy.'  So  we  might  with  a  sonata 
of  Beethoven's, — ^but  the  application  is  ours,  and 
not  the  composer's;  and  if  we  attempt  to  limit  the 
composer  to  our  interpretation,  rather  than  give  our- 
selves up  to  his  free  inspiration  from  a  purely  musical 
impulse,  all  we  get  by  it  is,  generally,  a  very  poor 
verbal  poem,  instead  of  a  noble  work  that  does  not, 
however,  belong  to  the  region  of  articulate  speech. 
It  is,  perhaps,  because  the  companion  poem  of  the 
Hesperides  does  not  even  represent  a  mood  of  feel- 
ing, as  well  as  because  it  is  far  less  perfect  in  exe- 
cution, that  it  has  been  left  out  of  succeeding  editions. 
It  may  be  suggested  that  The  Palace  of  Art 
contradicts  what  has  been  said  of  Mr.  Tennyson's 
tendency  to  paint  pictures  rather  than  to  dramatize 
life  and  its  emotions.  And  had  the  conception  of 
the  poem  been  adequately  worked  out,  it  would  have 
reached  the  highest  point  of  view  from  which  life 
can  be  surveyed.  The  poet  himself  declares  it  to 
be  an  allegory,  and,  therefore,  to  have  an  interest 
mainly  ethical,  to  which,  by  the  nature  of  the  case, 
all  mere  pictorial  or  musical  beauty  is  to  be  subor- 
dinate. But  how  has  the  conception  been  carried 
out  ?    Has  the  poet's  intention  been  adequately  rea- 


Ti:irNYSOir'S  poems.  27 

lized,  or  has  the  fully  developed  pictorial  and  rhyth- 
mical talent  been  too  much  for  his  less  highly 
developed  dramatic  and  philosophic  power  ?  No  one 
can  read  the  poem  and  fail  to  see  that  only  half 
his  intention  has  been  completed;  and  that,  in  spite 
of  himself,  the  pictorial  and  musical  element  has 
prevailed  over  the  moral  and  philosophic  aim.  With 
the  site,  construction,  and  furniture  of  The  SouVs 
Palace^  he  must  be  a  fastidious  critic  who  would 
not  be  highly  delighted, — the  finest  ideal  Strawberry 
Hill  that  ever  poet's  brain  conceived.  With  the 
truth  of  the  lesson,  too,  no  moralist  can  quarrel.  It 
is  profoundly  true  that  a  mere  artistic  enjoyment 
of  the  universe  will  make  no  great  soul  permanently 
happy.  To  make  the  poem  perfect,  the  process  of 
the  soul's  growing  discontent  with,  and  final  disgust 
at,  the  beautiful  objects  with  which  it  has  surrounded 
itself,  should  have  been  displayed  and  accounted 
for,  since,  as  mere  statement,  it  is  a  truism.  If  a 
real  man  has  come  to  the  conclusion  that  his  happi- 
ness consists  in  perfect  isolation  from  his  fellow- 
creatures  in  act  and  sympathy,  in  letting  the  world 
and  his  fellow-men  enter  his  thoughts  solely  as 
pictures  to  be  enjoyed  for  their  variety,  one  of  two 
things  happens  to  him, — either  that  his  pictures  cease 
to  amuse  him  when  his  appetite  for  novelty  is  worn 


28  ASSAYS. 

out,  or  arouse  his  sympathies  for  the  men  and  women 
whose  lives  and  thoughts  they  shadow  forth, — his 
awe  and  adoration  of  the  source  of  all  this  wondrous 
activity, — his  desire  to  understand  the  meaning  and 
purpose  of  it  all.  Mere  variety,  that  does  not  suc- 
ceed in  exciting  these  feelings,  soon  wearies ;  for  the 
infinite  element  in  life  is  not  the  variety  of  things 
by  which  we  are  acted  on,  but  the  unfathomable 
personality  of  our  own  being;  and  it  is  just  this 
personality  which  the  soul  in  the  poem  is  doing  all 
he  can  to  quench  in  himself.  He  is  trying  to  live 
by  the  outward  things  about  him,  and  by  the  enjoy- 
ment they  afford  to  his  intellect  ,•  while  he  ignores 
that  relation  to  God  and  to  his  fellow-beings,  in 
the  consciousness  and  acknowledgment  of  which 
spiritual  life  consists.  When,  then,  his  beautiful 
objects  pall  upon  him,  as  his  intellectual  and  per- 
ceptive craving  is  wearied,  they  become  dead  things, 
and  loathsome  in  his  eyes — a  disgust  at  his  life  seizes 
him, — while  he  shrinks  in  horror  from  the  prospec- 
tive isolation  of  death.  The  soul  that  has  not  exer- 
cised itself  in  feelings  which  grow  by  what  they  feed 
on  must  experience  inconceivable  horror  at  the  decay 
of  its  intellectual  and  perceptive  activities,  unless  it 
contemplates  annihilation.  But  the  soul  in  The 
Palace  has  reasoned  itself  into  a  conviction  of  im- 


T^NITYSON'S  POEMS.  29 

mortality,  and  the  pride  which  in  its  case  lay  at  the 
bottom  of  that  convictionj  becomes  its  own  scourge. 
For  immortality  becomes  blank  endless  isolation,  not 
merely  from  sympathies,  but  from  objects  of  in- 
terest,— one  never-ceasing  death  in  life.  Scorn  of 
himself  is  born  of  this  gloom  and  misery — vain  at- 
tempts to  rally  by  recalling  memories  of  past  strength 
and  enjoyment  soon  give  way  to  fixed  despair. 
Feeling  himself  wretched,  the  desire  of  pity  comes 
upon  him,  and  the  fellow-feeling  comes  with  the 
sense  of  the  need  of  fellow-feeling.  He  sees  that 
the  wretched  people  whom  he  had  despised  were 
necessary  to  him, — he  casts  away  his  proud  seclu- 
sion, abandons  his  life  of  intellect  and  enjoyment 
to  mourn  and  work  with  the  herd,  if  so  be  he  may 
obtain  pardon  for  his  inhuman  sin. 

Something  of  this  process  is  no  doubt  described 
in  the  poem,  but  not  with  sufficient  fulness  or  clear- 
ness. As  the  mere  statement  of  the  law  that  the 
soul  cannot  live  in  isolation  is  a  truism,  the  chief 
interest  of  the  poem  should  have  been  thrown  upon 
the  development  of  the  law  in  operation ;  the  reader 
should  have  been  made  to  go  along  with  the  soul 
in  its  exultation,  in  its  first  start  of  doubtful  sus- 
picion, in  its  gradual  perception  of  the  horrors  of  its 
condition,  in  its  slow  but  sure  realization  of  its  own 


30  SSSATS. 

wretcliedness,  in  its  prostration  of  self-abhorrence 
and  remorse.  A  nobler  allegory  could  not  be  con- 
ceived, or  one  more  fitted  to  the  age,  and  to  the 
highest  intellects  of  all  ages.  But  it  fails  just  where 
it  ought  to  have  been  strongest ;  and  what  we  have 
is  a  series  of  magnificent  pictm-es  in  magnificent 
verse,  followed,  indeed,  by  a  statement  of  the  moral 
in  very  noble  stanzas,  but  by  no  adequate  dramatic 
presentation  of  the  mode  in  which  the  great  law  of 
humanity  works  out  its  processes  in  the  soul.  What 
is  subordinate  in  object  not  only  fills  more  space — 
that  were  unimportant, — but  in  force  of  treatment, 
in  interest,  the  fumitm-e  of  The  Palace  quite  sur- 
passes the  vindication  of  the  moral  law.  Indeed, 
it  has  been  profanely  remarked  that  the  poem  resem- 
bles a  catalogue  raisonnee,  richly  illuminated,  of  the 
efiects  of  a  soul  compelled  for  a  time  to  quit  its 
mansion,  and  wishing  to  dispose  of  its  furniture  by 
auction.  Perhaps  it  would  have  been  impossible 
adequately  to  impress  the  moral  without  descend- 
ing altogether  from  the  heights  of  allegory,  and  pre- 
senting a  drama  of  actual  human  experience.  The 
universal  law  would  have  been  best  shown  in  a 
particular  case,  and  in  connexion  with  an  intelligi- 
ble human  life.  But  even  under  the  conditions  of 
the  allegory  more  emphasis  might  and  ought  to  have 


THHNYSON'S  POEMS.  31 

been  given  to  the  main  end  and  purpose  of  the  poem, 
and  less,  comparatively,  to  its  machinery.  Though 
many  alterations  have  been  made  in  subsequent 
editions,  this  main  defect  of  structure  has  never  been 
remedied. 

With  the  publication  of  the  Third  Series,  in  1842, 
Mr.  Tennyson  appears  distinctly  as  the  poet  of  his 
own  age.  His  apprenticeship  is  over,  his  mastery 
over  the  instruments  of  his  art  is  complete,  and  he 
employs  it  in  either  presenting  the  life  of  his  con- 
temporaries, the  thoughts,  incidents,  and  emotions 
of  the  nineteenth  century  in  England,  or  in  treating 
legend  and  history  with  reference  to  the  moral  and 
intellectual  sympathies  now  active  amongst  us.  In 
other  words,  he  no  longer  writes  poems  for  us  that 
charm  by  their  pictorial  and  rhythmical  beauty,  but, 
presenting  modes  of  existence  and  feeling  which  are 
either  altogether  inhuman  or  imperfectly  human, 
excite  none  of  the  interest  that  belongs  to  what  re- 
flects and  interprets  our  own  lives.  Mermen,  mer- 
maids, sea  fairies,  Ladies  of  Shalott,  Lotos  Eaters, 
disappear  from  the  scene  ;  Adelines,  Margarets,  Elea- 
nores,  no  longer  come  as  abstract  types  of  character 
without  speech,  story,  or  personal  relations,  figured 
forth  in  abundance  of  similes  but  with  none  of  the 
traits  by  which  the  mind  apprehends  individual  men 


32  JESS  ATS. 

and  women;  Grecian  nymphs  no  longer  pour  out 
their  loves  and  griefs  to  their  mother  earth,  and 
Grecian  goddesses  no  longer  interfere  in  the  affairs 
of  mortals,  and  shed  the  lustre  of  celestial  presences 
on  the  mountain  side.  That  in  which  we  cannot 
telieve,  either  ceases  to  be  treated  at  all,  or  is  treated 
as  symbol  and  picture  of  what  we  know  to  be  pro- 
foundly real.  So  far  is  this  change  from  necessitating 
any  narrowing  of  the  poet's  range  of  subjects,  that 
legendary  history,  fairy  fiction,  Greek  poetry,  and 
trees  endowed  with  human  speech,  blend  in  the  pro- 
cession with  Egyptian  fanatics,  rapt  nuns,  English 
ladies,  peasant  girls,  artists,  lawyers,  farmers, — in 
fact,  a  tolerably  complete  representation  of  the  mis- 
cellaneous public  of  the  present  day ;  while  the  forms 
vary  from  epic  fragments  to  the  homeliest  dialogue, — 
from  the  simplest  utterance  of  emotion  in  a  song  to 
the  highest  lyrical  allegory  of  a  terrible  and  profound 
law  of  life.  The  poet  looks  upon  a  larger  field  than 
before,  and  what  he  looked  on  before  he  now  sees 
with  a  more  penetrating  eye,  a  mind  that  appre- 
hends wider  and  deeper  relations.  He  paints  more 
brilliantly  and  forcibly  than  ever,  but  his  pictures 
speak  to  the  heart  and  spirit  as  well  as  to  the  eye ; 
his  music  is  even  richer  and  more  charming  in  its 
melody,  but  it  moves  henceforth  fraught  with  the 


TENNYSON'S  POEMS.  33 

feelings  and  ideas  by  which  men  and  nations  work 
out  the  divine  purposes  of  their  being.  In  some 
poems  the  artistic  beauty  seems  given  more  for  its 
own  sake  than  for  any  moral  that  lies  in  the  story, 
any  ulterior  meaning  which  it  unfolds ;  but  the 
noble  pictures  which  the  actions  and  persons  of 
human  beings  furnish  are  themselves  Moral  and  In- 
terpretation ;  and  in  no  poems  more  than  in  those 
which  simply  present  the  splendour  and  beauty  of 
humanity,  and  of  the  material  universe  in  which 
humanity  works  its  work,  does  the  poet  fulfil  his 
highest  function. 

The  first  poem  in  the  Third  Series  is  called  The 
Epic^  and  contains  a  fragment  on  the  death  of  King 
Arthur,  read  to  the  party  assembled  in  a  country- 
house  at  Christmas.  Set  thus  amidst  the  fireside 
talk  of  Christmas  Eve,  Morte  d'  Arthur  ceases  to  be 
a  fragment  of  animated  and  picturesque  epic  story, 
and  becomes  the  answer  of  a  Christian  poet  to  the 
querulous  lamentation  of  the  Christian  ritualist  and 
dogmatist  over  the  decay  of  faith.  The  noble  huma- 
nity and  piety  that  shone  in  chivalry  are  not  dead, 
he  tells  us,  with  King  Arthur,  though 

The  sequel  of  to-day  unsolders  aU 

The  goodliest  fellowship  of  famous  knights 

Whereof  this  world  holds  record. 


34  ESSAYS. 

Excalibur,  the  mystic  sword  which  Arthur  wielded 
so  long  and  so  well,  vanishes  with  him  from  the 
world,  but  the  heavenly  weapons  wherewith  men 
fight  the  good  fight  are  still  bestowed  upon  the 
heroes  of  the  successive  ages,  differing  in  form  and 
temper,  but  effective  for  the  various  work,  and  fitted 
to  the  hands  that  are  to  wield  them.  Not  only 
has  each  age  its  new  work  to  do,  its  new  in- 
struments and  new  men  to  do  it,  as  matter  of 
historical  fact,  but  it  must  be  so, — 

The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 

And  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways, 

Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world. 

The  Arthur  of  the  round-table  is  gone  to  fable- 
land;  but  the  desire  and  hope  that  gave  birth  to 
the  legends  of  chivalry  yet  live, — the  dim  prophecy 
that  he  will  one  day  return  and  rule  over  Britain 
is  ever  accomplishing  itself.  What  mean  those 
Christmas  bells  that  tell  us  yearly  Christ  is  bom? 
Do  they  lie  ?  No  !  they  blend  with  all  noble  legends 
that  speak  of  man's  great  deeds,  of  his  vaster  aspi- 
rations, of  his  yet  unaccomplished  hopes.  They 
remind  us  of  the  prophecy  to  which  fact  is  tending, 
of  the  ideal  after  which  the  real  is  striving.  To 
him  whose  heart  is  hopeful  and  brave,  who  will 
not  be  the  slave  of  formulas,  '  Arthur  is  come  again. 


THJVNYSOJrS  FOEMS.  35 

and  cannot  die,'  is  the  burden  of  the  world's  song ; 
'  Come  again,  and  thrice  as  fair,'  is  heard  in  e very- 
change  by  which  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened 
and  their  hearts  enlarged ;  '  Come  with  all  good 
things,  and  war  shall  be  no  more,'  the  strain  that 
echoes  clear  in  the  distance,  and  most  clear  when 
the  church  bells  ring  in  the  Christmas  morn.  Morte 
d'  Arthur  is  no  mere  story  out  of  an  old  book,  re- 
furbished with  modem  ornaments,  but  a  song  of 
hope,  a  prophecy  of  the  final  triumph  of  good.  Mr. 
Tennyson  has,  indeed,  lavished  upon  the  story  all 
the  resources  of  a  genius  eminently  pictorial,  and 
trained  to  complete  mastery  over  language  and  metre. 
He  might  unquestionably  have  silenced  the  parson 
in  a  more  simple  and  direct  fashion,  by  which  he 
would  not  only  have  deprived  us  of  a  noble  piece 
of  painting,  but  have  missed  a  poetic  and  profoundly 
true  method  of  looking  at  national  legends.  The 
poem  justifies  itself,  by  its  finished  excellence,  as  a 
work  of  art,  but  it  is  spiritualized  and  raised  above 
merely  pictorial  and  dramatic  beauty  by  its  setting, 
and  the  poet's  nineteenth-century  point  of  view. 

Mr.  Tennyson  makes  the  supposed  author,  Eve- 
rard  Hall,  talk  of  his  fragment  as 

Faint  Homeric  echoes,  nothing  -worth, — 
Mere  chaff  and  draff,  much  better  burnt. 

d2 


36  :essats. 

They  are  rather  Virgilian  than  Homeric  echoes ; 
elaborate  and  stately,  not  nawe  and  eager  to  tell 
their  story ;  rich  in  pictorial  detail ;  carefully  studied ; 
conscious  of  their  own  art ;  more  anxious  for  beauty 
of  workmanship  than  interest  of  action.  But  since 
John  Dryden  died,  no  English  poet  has  written 
verse  so  noble,  so  sonorous,  of  such  sustained  majesty 
and  might;  no  English  poet  has  brought  pictures 
so  clear  and  splendid  before  the  eye  by  the  power 
of  single  epithets  and  phrases;  and  Dryden  himself 
never  wrote  a  poem  so  free  from  careless  lines,  un- 
meaning words,  and  conventional  epithets.  The 
fragment  bursts  upon  us  like  the  blended  blast  and 
wail  of  the  trumpets  of  pursuing  and  retreating 
hosts:  a  whole  day's  alternate  victory  and  defeat, 
a  series  of  single  combats,  the  death  of  the  leaders 
one  by  one,  the  drawing  off  of  the  armies  at  sunset, 
King  Arthur  alone  and  wounded  on  the  field,  the 
coming  on  of  night  and  the  rising  of  the  moon,  the 
approach  of  King  Arthur's  last  captain  to  bear  him 
to  a  place  of  shelter,  are  pictured  to  the  imagina- 
tion in  the  few  vigorous  lines  that  commence  the 
poem. 

So  all  day  long  tlie  noise  of  battle  rolled 
Among  the  mountains  by  the  winter  sea; 
UntU  King  Arthur's  table,  man  by  man, 
Had  faU'n  in  Lyonness  about  their  Lord, 


TUNNYSON'S  FOEMS.  37 

King  Arthur:   then,  because  his  wound  was  deep, 
The  bold  Sir  Bedivere  uplifted  him. 
Sir  Bedivere,  the  last  of  all  his  knights, 
And  bore  him  to  a  chapel  nigh  the  field, 
A  broken  chancel  with  a  broken  cross. 
That  stood  on  a  dark  strait  of  barren  land. 
On  one  side  lay  the  ocean,  and  on  one 
Lay  a  great  water,  and  the  moon  was  full. 

That  phrase,  '  a  great  water,'  has  probably  often  been 
ridiculed  as  affected  phraseology  for  'a  great  lake'; 
but  it  is  an  instance  of  the  intense  presentative 
power  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  genius.  It  precisely  marks 
the  appearance  of  a  large  lake  outspread  and  taken 
in  at  one  glance  from  a  high  ground.  Had  '  a 
great  lake '  been  substituted  for  it,  the  phrase  would 
have  needed  to  be  translated  by  the  mind  into  water 
of  a  certain  shape  and  size,  before  the  picture  was 
realized  by  the  imagination.  '  A  great  lake^  is,  in 
fact,  one  degree  removed  from  the  sensuous  to  the 
logical, — from  the  individual  appearance  to  the  ge- 
neric name,  and  is  therefore  less  poetic  and  pictorial. 

With  what  distinctness,  with  what  force  and 
conciseness  of  language,  is  the  whole  scene  of  the 
churchyard,  with  its  associations,  brought  before  the 
mind:  its  ancestral  relics,  the  ruins  of  the  chapel, 
the  piercing  cold  of  the  night-wind  edged  with  sea- 
salt,  the  sharp  rocks  down  which  the  path  to  the 
lake  descends : — 


38  :essats. 

So  saying,  from  the  ruined  shrine  he  stept, 
And  in  the  moon  athwart  the  place  of  tombs, 
Where  lay  the  mighty  hones  of  ancient  men, 
Old  knights,  and  over  them  the  sea-wind  sang 
Shrill,  chin,  with  flakes  of  foam.     He,  stepping  down, 
By  zig-zag  paths,  and  juts  of  pointed  rock, 
Came  on  the  shining  levels  of  the  lake. 

The  classical  cequora  may  have  suggested  the  '  shin- 
ing levels^;  hut  there  is  a  deeper  reason  for  the 
change  of  phrase,  for  the  '  great  water,'  as  seen  from 
the  high  ground,  becomes  a  series  of  flashing  surfaces 
when  Sir  Bedivere  looks  along  it  from  its  margin. 
This  pictorial  reality  is  kept  up  through  the 
poem.  Excalibur  does  not  merely  sparkle  in  the 
moonlight  with  its  jewelled  hilt,  but 

The  winter  moon, 
Brightening  the  skirts  of  a  long  cloud,  ran  forth 
And  sparkled  keen  tvith  frost  against  the  hilt. 

Sir  Bedivere  does  not  doubt  whether  he  shall  throw 
the  sword,  but  stands 

This  way  and  that,  dividing  the  swift  mind, 
In  act  to  throw. 

None  the  worse  a  phrase  for  recalling  the  Vii'gilian 
'  Atque  animum  nunc  hue  celerem  nunc  dividit  illuc' 
The  'many-knotted  waterflags'  are  not  brought  in 
simply  to  hide  Excalibur,  they  must  add  their  life 
to  the  picture,  and 

"Whistle  stiff  and  dry  about  the  marge. 


TSNNTSOirS  POEMS.  39 

Everywhere  the  phenomenon  is  presented  with  the 
utmost  vividness  and  truth  of  appearance,  with  the 
utmost  fulness  of  sense-impressing  qualities ;  sen- 
suous concrete  language  takes  the  place  of  our  com- 
mon speech,  abounding  in  logical  generalizations 
and  names  of  classes.  The  mind  is  kept  awake  and 
in  full  activity  by  the  presence  of  those  realities 
which  are  smothered  and  hidden  by  the  conventional 
symbols  through  which  ordinary  narrative  is  carried 
on.  The  most  delicate  distinctions  of  phenomena 
are  noted  that  serve  as  an  aid  to  our  complete  rea- 
lization of  the  scene.     Sir  Bedivere  hears 

The  ripple  washing  in  the  reeds, 

and 

The  wild  water  lapping  on  the  crags ; 

the  two  phrases  marking  exactly  the  diflference  of 
sound  produced  by  water  swelling  up  against  a  per- 
meable or  impermeable  barrier. 

How  thoroughly  Shakspearian  is  King  Arthur's 

lament, 

"Woe  is  me ! 
Authiority  forgets  a  dying  king, 
Laid  widowed  of  tlie  power  in  his  eye 
That  bowed  the  will, 

where  the  personification  assists  the  imagination 
without  distressing  the  understanding,  as  when  dwelt 
upon,  and  expanded  in  detail ;  deepening  the  im- 
pressiveness  of  the  sentiment  by  giving  along  with 


40  :essays. 

a  true  thought  a  grand  picture, — just  such  a  passing 
flash  of  impassioned  rhetoric  as  would  become  the 
highest  oratory,  and  thrill  through  the  hearts  of  a 
great  assembly. 

In  the  description  of  Sir  Bedivere's  last  and 
successful  attempt  to  throw  the  sword  into  the  lake, 
every  word  tells  of  rapid,  agitated,  determined  action, 
refusing  to  dally  with  the  temptation  that  had  twice 
overcome  him : — 

Then  quickly  rose  Sir  Bedivere,  and  ran 

And,  leaping  down  the  ridges  lightly,  plunged 

Among  the  bulrush-beds,  and  clutch' d  the  sword. 

And  strongly  wheel' d  and  threw  it.     The  great  brand 

Made  Ughtniags  in  the  splendour  of  the  moon, 

And  flashing  round  and  round,  and  whirl' d  in  an  arch, 

Shot  like  a  streamer  of  the  northern  mom 

Seen  where  the  moving  isles  of  winter  shock 

By  night,  with  noises  of  the  northern  sea. 

So  flash' d  and  fell  the  brand  Excalibur. 

A  series  of  brilliant  effects  is  hit  off  in  those 
two  words,  '  made  lightnings.'  '  Whirl'd  in  an  arch,' 
is  a  splendid  instance  of  sound  answering  to  sense, 
which  the  older  critics  made  so  much  of;  the  addi- 
tional syllable  which  breaks  the  measure,  and  neces- 
sitates an  increased  rapidity  of  utterance,  seeming 
to  express  to  the  ear  the  rush  of  the  sword  up  its 
parabolic  curve.  And  with  what  lavish  richness  of 
presentative  power  is  the  boreal  aurora,  the  collision, 


TUNNTSOJSrS  POEMS.  41 

the  crash,  and  the  thunder  of  the  meeting  icebergs, 
"brought  before  the  eye.  An  inferior  artist  would 
have  shouted  through  a  page,  and  emptied  a  whole 
pallet  of  colour,  without  any  result  but  interrupting 
his  narrative,  where  Tennyson  in  three  lines  strik- 
ingly illustrates  the  fact  he  has  to  tell, — associates 
it  impressively  with  one  of  nature's  grandest  pheno- 
mena, and  gives  a  complete  picture  of  this  pheno- 
menon besides. 

How  dramatic    and    striking   is    King  Arthur's 
sudden  exclamation  on  Sir  Bedivere's  return : 

Now  see  I  by  thine  eyes  that  this  is  done; 

how  wonderfully  true  of  a  dying  man,  the 

Looking  wistfully,  with  wide  blue  eye, 
As  in  a  picture; 

how  pictorial  and  minutely  attentive  to  the  facts  of 
appearance, — 

But  the  other  swiftly  strode  from  ridge  to  ridge, 
Clothed  with  his  breath,  and  looking  as  he  walked 
Larger  than  human  on  the  frozen  hills; 

how  rapid  and  eager  the  haste  of  movement  in  reply 
to  the  King's  'Quick,  quick!' — 

He  heard  the  deep  behind  him,  and  a  cry 
Before.     His  own  thought  drove  him  like  a  goad. 
Dry  clash' d  his  harness  in  the  icy  caves 
And  barren  chasms,  and  all  to  left  and  right 
The  bare  black  cliff  clang' d  round  him,  as  he  based 
His  feet  on  juts  of  slippery  crag  that  rang 
Sharp-smitten  with  the  dint  of  armed  heels ; 


42  ESSAYS. 

do  we  not  seem  to  burst  from  tlie  narrow  steep  path 
down  the  ravine,  whose  tall  precipitous  sides  hide 
the  sky  and  the  broad  landscape  from  sight,  and 
come  out  in  a  moment  upon 

The  level  lake 
And  the  long  glories  of  the  winter  moon  ? 

In  some  over-fastidious  moods,  one  might  be  inclined 
to  charge  • 

A  cry  that  shivered  to  the  tingling  stars 

with  a  touch  of  that  exaggeration  which  belongs  to 
the  '  spasmodic  school ' ;  but  the  cry  comes  from 
a  company  of  spirits,  amid  mountains  whose  natural 
power  of  echo  is  heightened  by  the  silence  of  night, 
the  clearness  of  the  winter  air,  and  the  hardening 
effect  of  frost.  Such  a  cry  at  such  a  time,  and  in 
such  a  place,  would  thrill  from  rock  to  rock,  from 
summit  to  summit,  till  it  seemed  to  pierce  the  sky 
in  a  hm-tling  storm  of  multitudinous  arrowy  sounds, 
and  die  away  in  infinitely  distant  pulsations  among 
the  stars.  In  the  following  lines,  where  the  agony 
of  lamentation  is  compared  to 

A  wind  that  shrills 
All  night  in  a  waste  land,  where  no  one  comes, 
Or  hath  cotne  since  tlie  making  of  the  world, — 

the  passage  italicised  may  seem  at  first  to  add 
nothing  to  the  force  of  the  comparison,  as  the  shrill- 


TUNJH'SON'S  POEMS.  43 

ness  of  the  wind  would  not  be  greater  in  an  unin- 
habited place  than  anjwhere  else  in  open  ground. 
But  the  moumfulness  of  the  feeling  a  man  would 
experience  in  such  a  place,  from  the  sense  of  utter 
isolation  and  sterility,  is  blended  with  the  naturally 
sad  wail  of  the  wind  over  a  wide  waste,  and  the 
addition  thus  becomes  no  mere  completion  of  a 
thought  of  which  only  part  is  wanted  for  the  illus- 
tration— though  that  were  allowable  enough,  accord- 
ing to  ordinary  poetic  usage, — but  gives  a  heightening 
of  sentiment  without  which  the  illustration  itself 
would  be  incomplete  and  less  impressive. 

Magnificent  similes  do  not  make  poetry,  but  they 
are  among  its  most  effective  means  of  filling  the 
mind  of  the  reader  with  the  actual  grandeur  and 
pathos  of  the  particular  scene  presented.  Where 
the  poet  seizes  not  upon  some  mere  superficial  re- 
semblance that  draws  the  fancy  between  two  objects 
essentially  different  in  the  general  feeling  they  excite, 
but  brings  in  a  phenomenon  of  nature  which  excites 
feelings  analogous  to  those  belonging  to  the  event 
or  scene  he  is  narrating,  the  use  of  simile  and  figure 
not  only  enables  him  to  avoid  encumbering  his 
narrative  by  detail,  and  epithet,  and  general  terms 
otherwise  necessary  to  bring  his  object  before  the 
mind,  but  associates  that  object  at  once  and  spon- 


44  USSATS. 

taneously  with  the  feelings  "belonging  to  the  illus- 
trating phenomenon — an  effect  which  could  not  he 
produced  apart  from  this  device  except  hy  long 
drawn-out  reflections.  Simile  and  figure  may  be 
regarded  as  a  natural  short-hand,  which  substitutes 
well-known  things  for  the  unknown  qualities  of 
whatever  has  to  be  described,  and  which  therefore 
gives  the  general  effect  of  the  things  to  be  described 
without  necessitating  the  task  of  minute  description. 
This  is  exactly  the  reverse  of  the  use  made  of  these 
forms  of  speech  by  the  man  of  wit,  who  intentionally 
selects  for  his  illustration  some  merely  accidental 
and  often  merely  verbal  resemblance  between  two 
things  essentially  different  in  themselves  and  in  the 
feelings  they  excite.  But  the  poet,  in  his  impas- 
sioned or  serious  moods,  seizes  not  on  resemblances 
but  true  analogies ;  and  they  at  once  adorn  his  poetry 
with  impressive  pictures,  and  convey  his  meaning 
with  force  and  brevity.  The  passage  in  which 
Arthur  is  described  as  dying  in  the  arms  of  the 
mourning  queen,  is  a  fine  instance  of  a  poetical  use 
of  simUe  and  figure.  The  moon  fading  in  the  early 
morning,  the  dazzling  brightness  of  the  rising  sun, 
the  shattered  column,  the  glancing  flight  of  a  shoot- 
ing star,  bring  before  the  mind  not  only  the  dying 
king,  pale  and  bleeding,  but  the  contrast  between 


ti:nn'YSo:n-'S  poems.  45 

his  present  weakness  and  the  glory  and  triumplis 
of  his  cliivalrous  and  "brilliant  life.  In  a  few  lines 
his  whole  storj  is  told:  it  is  not  merely  a  dying 
warrior  who  lies  before  us,  but  the  strength,  the 
state,  the  splendour,  and  enjoyment  of  his  past  life, 
flash  before  the  imagination,  and  deepen  the  sadness 
and  humiliation  of  his  defeat  and  death. 

For  all  his  face  was  white 
And  colourless,  and  like  the  wither' d  moon 
Smote  by  the  fresh  beam  of  the  springing  east ; 
And  all  his  greaves  and  cuisses  dash'd  with  drops 
Of  onset ;   and  the  light  and  lustrous  curls — 
That  made  his  forehead  like  a  rising  sun 
High  from  the  dais-throne — were  parch' d  with  dust; 
Or,  clotted  into  points  and  hanging  loose, 
Mix'd  with  the  knightly  growth  that  fringed  his  lips. 
So  like  a  shattered  column  lay  the  king; 
Not  like  that  Arthur  who,  with  lance  in  rest, 
From  spur  to  plume  a  star  of  tournament. 
Shot  through  the  lists  at  Camelot,  and  charged 
Before  the  eyes  of  ladies  and  of  kings. 

Let  not  the  purpose  of  this  analysis  of  detail 
be  misunderstood.  Fine  phrases  and  fine  passages 
do  not  make  a  fine  poem ;  but  they  do  show  that 
unflagging  activity  of  imagination,  which  operating 
on  a  finely-constructed  whole,  change  a  well-propor- 
tioned framework  into  a  temple  of  carved  stones, 
every  one  of  which  is  instinct  with  life  and  thought, — 
where  not  only  the  coup  d'osil  strikes,  but  the  closest 


46  ASSAYS. 

and    most    minute    examination    only    opens  fresh 
som-ces  of  wonder  and  enjoyment.     In  many  poems 
that  possess  merit  equal  to  Morte  d' Arthur,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  pick  out  single  passages  or  lines 
that  would  be  beautiful  or    striking,  when  taken 
from  their  context.     JDora  is  an  instance.     But  this 
examination  of  details  proves  that  where  Mr.  Tenny- 
son is   employed  upon   a  poem  which   consists   of 
a  series  of  actions   admitting  of  splendid  pictorial 
presentment,   being  in  their  own  nature   pictorially 
splendid,  his   pictures   are   drawn   with  a  vigorous 
hand,  and  coloured  to  the  life ;  and  that  no  stroke 
of  his  brush   is  without  meaning.      And  this   has 
been  done,  not  because  it  is  supposed  that  professed 
admirers  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  poetry  needed  help  to 
point  out  the  just  grounds  of  their  admiration,  but 
because  many  persons   say   they    cannot   see  why 
others  do  so  highly  admire  Mr.  Tennyson;   and  to 
show  them  that  a  hasty,  careless  glance   over  his 
verses — such  as  they  give  to  a  leader  in  a  newspaper, 
or  even  less  attentive  and  interested, — is  not  pre- 
cisely the  way  to  arrive  at  the  enjoyment  of  a  poet 
in  whom  every  word  is  the  result  of  intense  activity 
and  concentration  of  the  imagination,  controlled  by 
cultivated  taste,  and  trained  to  a  rare  mastery  over 
language  and  metre. 


TJENNTSON'S  POEMS.  47 

The  group  of  poems  founded  on  legendary  history, 
of  which  Morte  d'' Arthur  is  the  most  important, 
consists,  besides,  of  Oodiva,  St.  Simeon  Sti/Utes, 
Ulysses,  St.  Agnes,  and  Sir  Galahad.  Godiva 
would  have  yielded  to  analysis  results  similar  to 
those  we  have  obtained  from  Morte  d^  Arthur,  re- 
sembling that  poem  in  pictorial  beauty  and  vivid 
dramatic  presentation.  A  virginal  purity,  a  spirit 
of  chivalrous  reverence  for  womanhood  and  self- 
sacrifice,  veils  and  softens  as  with  a  halo  of  glory 
the  figure  of  the  'woman  of  a  thousand  summers 
back,'  as  'she  rode  forth  clothed  on  with  chastity.' 
Though  compelled  to  pass  the  poem  without  notice 
of  its  details,  we  cannot  but  direct  the  attention  of 
our  readers  to  the  intense  imaginative  reality  of 
that  passage  in  which  the  feelings  of  Godiva,  as 
she  rides  through  the  streets,  are  transferred  to  the 
material  objects  by  which  she  is  surrounded: — 

The  deep  air  listened  round  her  as  she  rode, 
And  all  the  low  wind  hardly  breathed  for  fear. 
The  little  wide-mouthed  heads  upon  the  spout 
Had  cunning  eyes  to  see,  &e. 

And  again  in  the  same  spirit,  subordinating  the  truth 

of  literal  fact  to  the  higher  dramatic  truth  of  passion : 

And  all  at  once, 
With  twelve  great  shocks  of  sound,  the  shameless  noon 
"Was  clash' d  and  hammer'd  from  a  hundred  towers, 
One  after  one. 


48  USSAYS. 

The  other  four  poems  of  the  group  aim  at  pre- 
senting t}^es  of  character,  and  not  at  nan-ative  of 
action.  They  take  the  form  of  speeches  uttered  on 
occasions  which  adequately  represent  the  essential 
characteristics  of  the  life  of  the  speaker.  The  habitual 
selection  of  this  form  by  Mr.  Tennyson  is  one  among 
many  indications  of  the  intensity  of  his  imagination. 
It  enables  him  to  present  in  the  shortest  compass  the 
essentials  of  his  subject  without  the  intervention  of 
any  commonplace  machinery,  but  it  makes  a  demand 
upon  the  imaginative  resources  of  his  readers,  which 
goes  some  way  to  explain  why  many  persons  who 
enjoy  certain  kinds  of  poetry  are  utterly  unable  to 
appreciate  his.  Each  of  these  four  poems  contains 
implicitly  the  story  of  a  life  and  the  exhibition  of 
a  well-marked  type  of  character.  We  cannot  pause 
to  dwell  upon  the  force  and  truth  of  the  drawing  in 
each  case,  but  the  group  is  important,  as  indicating 
the  versatility  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  genius,  his  catho- 
licity of  imaginative  apprehension,  and  his  command 
over  the  elements  of  the  most  widely  differing  cha- 
racters. St.  Simeon  Stylites  proves  that  it  is  from 
no  want  of  power  to  paint  the  horrible  and  the  gi'O- 
tesque  that  Mr.  Tennyson  abstains  as  a  rule  from 
such  subjects.  And  St  Agnes  is  the  more  remarkable 
as  showing  a  hearty  appreciation  of  the  purer  form  of 


TENNYSON'S  FOEMS.  49 

asceticism  in  a  poet  whose  characteristic  excellence 
lies  in  the  portrayal  of  tender  sentiment  and  volup- 
tuous passion,  upheld  and  refined  by  a  stainless  purity. 

We  pass  on  to  the  love-poems,  and  in  them  we 
find  the  same  variety  of  treatment,  the  same  avoidance 
of  repetition,  just  noticed  in  the  legendary  group. 

The  Gardener^ s  Daughter,  with  its  rich  luxuriance 
of  imagery,  its  warmth  of  passion,  its  magnificence 
of  plirase,  its  abandon  of  sentiment,  is  not  more  es- 
sentially different  from  the  severely  dramatic  simpli- 
city and  pathos  of  Dora,  than  the  calm  retrospect  and 
peaceful  affection  of  The  Miller  s  Daughter  is  fi:om 
the  stormy  current  of  slighted  passion  and  fierce 
scorn  that  rushes  wildly  on  through  Locksley  Hall, 
to  find  its  haven  in  grand  visions  of  progress  and 
the  excitement  of  enterprise.  The  playful  fancy  of 
The  Talking  Oak  touches  the  airy  treble  of  a  scale 
of  which  Love  and  Duty  sound  the  deepest  and 
most  solemn  chords.  The  rustic  grace  and  sweet- 
ness of  The  Mag  Queen  contrast  sharply  with  the 
rude  force  and  indignant  sarcasm  of  Lady  Clara 
Vere  de  Vere ;  while  the  conversational  idylls  blend 
with  the  level  tones  of  ordinary  conversation  touches 
of  natural  beauty  and  flashes  of  elevated  thought, 
which  raise  them  to  the  rank  of  poems,  and  recal 
what  are  among  the  happier  hours  of  our  modern 

E 


50  msATS. 

life, — those  hours  with  cultivated  and  genial  friends, 
in  which  the  cares  of  the  world  are  shaken  off,  and 
the  best  memories  of  the  past,  the  noblest  aspira- 
tions, the  gentlest  feelings,  revive  amid  mountain 
and  lake,  for  the  votaries  of  ambition,  science,  or 
business. 

Then,  as  to  form,  we  find  narrative,  dialogue, 
soliloquy,  and  direct  address.  We  have  blank  verse 
that  ranges  through  all  the  scale  of  feeling,  from 
the  exquisitely  rhythmical,  full,  majestic,  down  to 
the  just  accented  strain,  that  may  fairly  represent 
genial  and  animated  conversation ;  we  have  lyric 
measures  that  flow  softly  on  like  a  quiet  streamlet, 
as  in  the  Miller  s  Daughter;  go  straight  and  fierce 
to  their  mark  like  arrows  of  scorn,  as  in  Ladj/  Clara 
Vere  de  Vere ;  float  gaily  or  sadly  on  in  sweet 
calm  to  the  music  of  a  young  girl's  life  and  early 
death,  as  in  the  three  strains  of  The  May  Queen; 
dash  on  in  thunder  and  in  storm,  sweeping  vast 
spaces,  gathering  in  lurid  gloom,  or  clearing  in 
sudden  flashes,  impetuous  hurricane  of  thick  clouds, 
or  dazzling  brightness  of  tropic  summer,  as  in  Locksley 
Hall.  No  poet  but  Goethe  has,  in  our  day,  swept 
a  lyre  of  such  varied  range,  with  so  perfect  a  com- 
mand of  every  key.  Moreover,  none  of  these  poems 
belong  to  the  class  called  'occasional.'      They  all 


TENNYSON'S  POEMS.  51 

have  a  construction  which  tells  a  complete  story 
— often  the  story  of  a  life.  Some  touch,  frequently- 
slight,  lets  us  into  the  previous  stages  of  the  per- 
sonal history,  and  throws  forward  a  clear  light  upon 
the  future  career.  The  passions  are  treated,  not 
merely  as  giving  rise  to  striking  incidents,  but  as 
exercising  a  permanent  influence  on  the  character 
and  destiny.  Though  for  the  most  part  lyrical  in 
form,  the  poems  rise,  thus,  to  the  full  significance 
of  dramas,  as  has  been  explained  in  respect  to  The 
Millers  Daughter ;  and  similar  remarks  might  be 
truly  applied  to  all  the  principal  poems.  These 
qualities  of  variety  and  completeness  give  Mr.  Tenny- 
son a  claim  to  a  place  among  great  poets,  which 
the  form  and  length  of  his  compositions  somewhat 
interfere  with  in  the  first  rough  estimate  of  a  public 
inclined  to  set  *  the  how  much  before  the  how. ' 
We  can  only  indicate  them  by  selected  instances; 
but  the  careful  analysis  of  any  one  of  his  poems 
would  lead  to  the  same  conclusions. 

The  love  story  to  which  The  Gardener's  Daughter 
supplies  a  title  and  a  central  figure,  takes  the  form  of 
a  narrative  from  the  lips  of  the  man  who  wooed 
and  won  the  maiden  for  a  wife.  By  this  selection 
of  a  speaker,  who  is  made  to  dwell  on  the  blissful 
recollections  of  early  love,  the  dramatic  colouring 
e2 


52  JESSATS. 

throughout  is  maintained  at  a  glowing  tone,  without 
being  exposed  to  the  charge  of  exaggeration.  The 
minutest  incidents,  the  changing  lights  and  shades 
of  feeling,  belonging  to  such  a  period,  are  stamped 
indelibly  in  the  memory,  and  never  lose  their  first 
fresh  charm  and  interest.  To  raise  the  colouring 
still  higher,  and  justify  a  more  elaborately  picturesque 
treatment,  a  fonder  dwelling  upon  every  detail  of 
natural  beauty  then  noted  with  the  seeing  eye  of 
a  loving  heart,  the  speaker  is  not  only  a  lover,  but 
a  painter.  The  motive  is  thus  admirably  chosen  for 
treatment  at  once  impassioned  and  pictorial,  for  the 
minutest  detail  of  feeling  and  circumstance,  for  the 
freest  play  of  an  imaginative  sympathy  with  nature, 
and  the  rich  hues  that  inward  joy  sheds  over  the 
outward  world.  But  Mr.  Tennyson  is  the  last  man 
to  forget  that  law  of  reserve  which  binds  the  lover — 
the  law  which  a  recent  writer  has  so  well  expressed, 
when  he  says — 

Not  to  unveil  before  the  gaze 

Of  an  imperfect  sympathy, 
In  aught  we  are,  is  the  sweet  praise 

And  the  main  sum  of  modesty. 
Love  blabbed  of  is  a  great  decline ; 

A  careless  ■world  imsanctions  sense; 
But  he  who  casts  heaven's  truth  to  swine 

Consummates  all  incontinence.* 

*  The  Angel  in  the  House. 


TJENIfTSOIi'S  POEMS.  53 

The  rapture  delineated  in  TTie  Gardener'' s  Daughter 
is  the  rapture  of  hope  when  the  eyes  and  heart  first 
feel  the  loveliness  of  a  woman,  and  all  nature  shines 
in  the  wedding-garment,  which  is  but  the  reflection 
of  the  lover's  inward  life.  No  babbling  of  lover's 
secrets  is  here ;  no  laying  bare  to  a  third  person  of 
what  is  perfectly  befitting,  graceful,  beautiful,  and 
pure  when  done  and  said  at  love's  instinctive  bidding, 
but  becomes  the  contrary  of  these  when  spoken  of 
to  others,  or  dwelt  on  in  cool,  reflective  moments. 
The  highest  emotion  is  sacred,  only  revealed  to  the 
most  perfect  sympathy — that  of  the  person  who 
excites  and  shares  it ;  and  even  that  revelation  must 
be  inarticulate,  of  act,  of  look — not  of  speech.  There 
is  profound  beauty  and  truth  in  the  allegory  that 
represents  love  as  a  blind  child ;  he  knows  no  wrong, 
is  unconscious  of  what  he  does, — trusting  to  a  divine 
instinct.  The  speaker  in  The  Gardener  s  Daughter 
holds  fast  to  this  law.  He  paints  the  courtship,  not 
the  marriage;  speaks  of  his  heart's  idol  as  the  star 
that  shone  upon  his  course,  the  sun  that  lighted  his 
day ;  as  the  goddess,  ere  yet  she  stepped  from  her 
ambrosial  cloud-pedestal,  and  blessed  his  life  with 
joys  too  sacred  for  the  common  ear.  It  is  the  beauty 
that  he  wooed,  not  the  wife  that  he  won,  that  he 
unveils  for  the  listener  to  his  tale.    And  as  if  even 


54  £SSATS. 

this  were  too  much, — as  if  it  were  a  kind  of  pro- 
fanation to  utter  even  these  preludes  of  a  life-blessed- 
ness to  one  who  might,  the  moment  after,  look  upon 
the  actual  woman  who  was  their  object,  the  speaker 
tells  us  that  she  has  passed  from  earth  and  mortal 
taint, — that  no  second  love  has  confused  her  image ; 
but  long  years  of  lonely  widowhood  have  only 
softened  and  hallowed  it  in  his  heart.  As  he  speaks, 
he  is  standing  before  her  veiled  portrait,  and,  raising 
the  veil,  he  says — 

Behold  her  there, 
As  I  beheld  her  ere  she  knew  my  heart, 
My  first,  last  love ;  the  idol  of  my  youth. 
The  darling  of  my  manhood,  and  alas ! 
Now  the  most  hlessed  memory  of  mine  age. 

And  thus,  by  this  slight  touch,  what  would  have 
been  merely  a  charmingly  told  love  story,  becomes, 
in  fact,  a  story  of  a  life  sustained  by  love  to  the 
end,  as  it  was  in  its  youth  brightened  and  enriched 
by  love.  The  single  phase  of  passion  and  of  fortune 
is  not  only  worked  out  to  its  crisis,  so  as  to  satisfy 
the  artistic  sense  of  completeness,  but  the  value 
and  influence  of  that  single  phase  is  shown  as  spread- 
ing through  to  the  end  of  life,  and  the  feeling  that 
demands  an  eternal  meaning  and  purpose  in  each 
stage  of  life  is  fully  satisfied. 

It  would  be   impossible   in    any  notice   of  Mr. 


T^NJ^f^YSOIPS  POEMS.  66 

Tennyson  to  be  satisfied  with  a  survey  of  tlie  plan 
of  what  may  fairly  be  called  his  most  popular  poem. 
He,  indeed,  constructs  his  poems  poetically,  and 
certainly  cannot  be  ranked  with  the  mere  exquisite 
worker  of  detail;  but  all  his  detail  is  so  exquisite 
in  his  finer  poems,  that  it  would  be  as  hopeless  to 
attempt  to  convey  a  true  impression  of  them  without 
exhibiting  this  detail  in  characteristic  passages,  as 
it  would  be  to  make  a  person  feel  all  the  subtle 
and  penetrating  grace  and  sweetness  of  a  Raffaelle 
Madonna  by  description,  or  to  transfuse  into  words 
the  glory  and  power  of  Titian's  colours.  After  all 
that  philosophical  critics  have  talked  of  organic  unity, 
and  such-like  hard  phrases,  since  Coleridge  influenced 
English  criticism,  and  allowing  all  the  importance 
that  belongs  to  the  facts  expressed,  or  intended  to  be 
expressed,  by  the  phrases,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the  finest  construction  would  produce  little  effect  in 
poetry  without  fine  details;  and  that  where  the 
genius  for  producing  these  exists,  the  art  or  instinct 
which  combines  them  will  seldom  be  wanting  when 
the  poet  is  mature.  The  real  truth  is,  that  what 
is  often  called  fine  detail  is  nothing  but  tawdry  orna- 
ment,— the  feeble  or  vehement  effort  to  say  fine 
things  without  having  fine  thoughts, — to  utter  raptures 
that  are  insincere  and  unreal,  inasmuch  as  the  imagi- 


56  JESS  ATS. 

native  power  to  summon  up  the  beautiful  objects 
supposed  to  justify  the  rapture  is  wanting,  and  the 
would-be  poet  has  before  him  merely  the  general 
conceptions  of  beautiful  objects,  to  which  he  applies, 
consequently,  mere  general  conventional  phrases. 
Mr.  Tennyson's  phrases,  on  the  contrary,  are  pictures ; 
iand  his  rhythm  the  natural  music  of  a  mind  rejoicing 
in  the  beauty  of  the  pictures  that  flow  in  ordered 
continuity  and  fulness  before  him.  The  unflagging 
activity  of  this  pictorial  power  is  manifested  fre- 
quently in  Mr.  Tennyson's  poems,  by  the  slightest 
change  from  the  ordinary  phrase,  as  has  been  noticed 
in  Morte  6?'  Arthur.  Here,  again,  in  The  Gardener  s 
Daughter  f — 

My  Eustace  might  have  sat  for  Herciiles — 
So  muscular  he  spread,  so  broad  of  hreast, — 

where  the  spread  gives  not  the  mere  statement  of 
a  fact,  but  its  actual  appearance ;  the  space  fills  before 
the  eye  with  the  bulky  frame  of  the  man,  as  we 
look. 

In  describing  the  locality  of  the  garden,  Mr. 
Tennyson  fills  the  mind  with  the  realites  of  the 
place.  We  know  the  distance  from  the  city  by 
hearing  the  funeral  and  marriage  bells  and  the  clang- 
ing of  the  minster  clock,  borne  upon  the  wind;  by 
looking  out  along  a  league  of  grass.      The  nature 


TJENIfTSON'S  POEMS.  57 

of  the  coimtiy  and  the  time  of  year  are  given  in  the 
slow,  broad  stream,  with  its  floating  lilies,  its  pleasure 
skiffs,  and  its  barges ;  in  the  rich  grass  meadows  with 
their  pasturing  cattle,  and  their  low-hanging  lime 
trees  in  flower,  humming  with  winged  life.  And 
to  complete  the  picture  thus  presented,  the  extreme 
distance  is  filled  by  the  three-arched  bridge,  with  the 
minster-towers  rising  above  it — 

Not  wliolly  in  the  busy  world,  nor  quite 
Beyond  it,  blooms  the  garden  that  I  love. 
News  from  the  hiunming  city  comes  to  it 
In  sound  of  funeral  or  of  marriage  beUs; 
And,  sitting  muffled  in  dark  leaves,  you  hear 
The  windy  clanging  of  the  minster  clock; 
Although  between  it  and  the  garden  lies 
A  league  of  gi-ass,  wash'd  by  a  slow  broad  stream, 
That,  stirr'd  with  languid  pulses  of  the  oar, 
"Waves  all  its  lazy  lilies,  and  creeps  on. 
Barge -laden,  to  three  arches  of  a  bridge 
Crown'd  with  the  minster-towers. 

The  fields  between 
Are  dewy-fresh,  brows' d  by  deep-udder' d  kiae. 
And  all  about  the  large  lime  feathers  low. 
The  lime  a  summer  home  of  murmurous  wings. 

A  landscape  by  Constable  or  De  Wint  would  not 
bring  the  scene  more  clearly  before  the  eye,  or  with 
more  of  the  quiet  truth  of  happy,  but  unimpassioned 
observation.  But  it  is  the  high  prerogative  of  poetry 
that  she  can  throw  over  nature  the  '  wedding-garment 
or  the  shroud,'  and  exhibit  landscape  as  it  is  coloured 


68  USSAYS. 

by  emotion.  It  would  be  rash  to  assert  perfection 
of  anything  human;  but  the  following  description 
of  a  country  walk  on  a  May  morning,  under  the 
influence  of  the  premonition  of  a  first  passion,  before 
the  subjective  excitement  is  determined  to  and  con- 
centrated upon  its  proper  object,  approaches  that 
limit.     Since 

Adam  first 
Embraced  hia  Eve,  in  happy  hour, 

love  was  ever  the  great  ideal  artist,  at  whose  touch 

Every  bird  of  Eden  burst 
In  carol,  every  bud  in  flower; 

but  he  never  painted  a  more  glowing  picture  of 
a  mind  full  of  the  bliss  that  is  half-sister  to  desire, 
or  of  a  nature  reflecting  the  bliss  in  a  thousand 
beautiful  sights  and  sounds  than  this : — 

And  sure  this  orbit  of  the  memory  folds 
For  ever  in  itself  the  day  we  went 
To  see  her.     All  the  land  in  flowery  squares. 
Beneath  a  broad  and  equal-blowing  wind, 
Smelt  of  the  coming  summer,  as  one  large  cloud 
Drew  downward:  but  all  else  of  Heaven  was  pure 
Up  to  the  Sun,  and  May  from  verge  to  verge, 
And  May  with  me  from  head  to  heel.     And  now, 
As  though  'twere  yesterday,  as  though  it  were 
The  hour  just  flown,  that  mom  with  all  its  sound, 
(For  those  old  Mays  had  thrice  the  life  of  these,) 
Rings  in  mine  ears.     The  steer  forgot  to  graze, 
And,  where  the  hedge-row  cuts  the  pathway,  stood, 


t:ennyson's  poems.  59 

Leaning  his  horns  into  the  neighbour  field, 

And  lowing  to  his  fellows.     From  the  woods 

Came  voices  of  the  well-contented  doves, 

The  lark  could  scarce  get  out  his  notes  for  joy, 

But  shook  his  song  together  as  he  near'd 

His  happy  home,  the  ground.     To  left  and  right, 

The  cuckoo  told  his  name  to  all  the  hills; 

The  mellow  ouzel  fluted  in  the  elm ; 

The  redcap  whistled ;  and  the  nightingale 

Sang  loud,  as  though  he  were  the  bird  of  day. 

We  have  minute  touches,  bringing  out  common 
objects  with  a  passing  glory  that  catches  without 
chaining  the  attention,  as  well  as  those  finished 
pictures  upon  which  the  mind  dwells  with  a  fixed 
delight  of  contemplation ;  touches  that  charm  us 
with  their  truth,  and  help  to  mark  the  whole  scene 
in  its  distinction  of  season  and  weather.  Here  are 
two  from  a  crowd  of  such.  From  the  lilac  in 
crowded  bloom 

One  warm  gust,  full-fed  with  perfume,  blew 
Beyond  us,  as  we  entered  in  the  cool. 

«  «  «  «  « 

In  the  midst 
A  cedar  spread  his  dark-green  layer  of  shade. 
The  garden  glasses  shone,  and  momently 
The  twinkling  laiirels  scattered  silver  lights; 

where  the  epithet  silver  admirably  expresses  the 
metallic  glitter  of  the  laurel  leaves  in  the  sun,  com- 
pared with  the  deader  green  of  ordinary  foliage. 

'  The  last  night's   gale/  which  had  blown  the 


60  ESSAYS. 

rose-tree  across  the  walk,  maj  have  "been  introduced 
mainly  to  give  Rose  a  graceful  occupation,  and  to 
justify  a  charming  picture.  But  even  if  that  were 
its  main  purpose,  it  no  less  contributes  a  fact  which 
accounts  for  the  marvellous  transparency  of  the  May 
morning,  the  clearness  of  the  atmosphere  shedding 
rapture  through  the  veins  and  hearts  of  all  living 
things.  Applied  to  most  poets,  such  an  observation 
would  savour  of  over-refining,  but  Tennyson's  never- 
aimless  minuteness  justifies  it. 

In  the  picture  of  Rose  which  follows,  Mr.  Tenny- 
son has,  with  the  true  instinct  of  genius,  avoided 
attempting  to  paint  in  words  a  beautiful  human  face, 
while  he  preserves  dramatic  propriety  in  not  making 
a  lover  at  the  first  glance  master  the  expression  of 
the  countenance  he  afterwards  knows  in  all  its 
meanings.  The  painter-lover  would  be  at  once  at- 
tracted to  the  picturesque  attitude,  general  efiect  of 
dress,  light  and  shade,  the  contour  of  the  figure,  and 
the  bright  points  of  colour — 

One  arm  aloft, 
Gown'd  in  pure  white,  that  fitted  to  the  shape — 
Holding  the  bush,  to  fix  it  back,  she  stood. 
A  single  stream  of  all  her  soft  brown  hair 
Poured  on  one  side :  the  shadow  of  the  flowers 
Stole  all  the  golden  gloss,  and,  wavering 
Lovingly  lower,  trembled  on  her  waist — 
Ah,  happy  shade — and  still  went  wavering  down, 


THIfNYSOJ^S  POEMS.  61 

But,  ere  it  touch' d  a  foot,  that  might  have  danced 
The  greensward  into  gi'eener  circles,  dipt. 
And  mix'd  with  shadows  of  the  common  ground! 
But  the  full  day  dwelt  on  her  brows,  and  sunn'd 
Her  violet  eyes,  and  all  her  Hebe-bloom, 
And  doubled  his  own  warmth  against  her  lips, 
And  on  the  bounteous  wave  of  such  a  breast 
As  never  pencil  di-ew.     Half  light,  half  shade, 
She  stood,  a  sight  to  make  an  old  man  young. 

With  what  exquisite  feeling  is  the  progress  of 
the  love  associated  with  the  imagery  of  the  garden 
in  which  the  loved  one  '  hoarded  in  herself,  grew, 
seldom  seen,' 

The  daughters  of  the  year, 
One  after  one,  thro'  that  still  garden  passed: 
Each  garlanded  with  her  peculiar  flower 
Danced  into  light,  and  died  into  the  shade; 
And  each  in  passing  touch' d  with  some  new  grace 
Or  seem'd  to  touch  her,  so  that  day  by  day. 
Like  one  that  never  can  be  wholly  known. 
Her  beauty  grew ; 

and  in  that  line,  '  like  one  that  never  can  be  wholly- 
known,'  is  revealed  one  exhaustless  charm  in  all 
our  true  personal  relations.  Things,  as  things,  soon 
weary  us,  because  we  soon  know  all  we  can  ever 
know  about  them ;  persons  are  ever  new,  ever  un- 
folding to  us  something  unexpected,  as  they  become 
dearer  to  us,  and  we  look  at  them  with  eyes  opened 
by  sympathy  and  aifection.  Only  the  view  of  the 
universe,  as  a  revelation  of  a  personal  being,  supplies 
to  outward  objects  exhaustless  variety  and  interest. 


62  USSATS. 

The  law  of  reserve  which  rules  this  poem  haa 
been  already  alluded  to.  It  requires  neither  art  nor 
genius  to  raise  emotion  of  a  low  kind  in  a  reader, 
if  a  writer  has  no  reserve.  The  mind  is  sufficiently- 
awake  in  all  of  us  to  realize  pictures  that  appeal 
to  the  sensual  passions;  and  a  writer  has  no  more 
difficulty  in  being  powerful,  if  he  give  himself  the 
licence  of  some  poetry,  than  he  has  in  being  witty, 
if  he  copy  Swift's  unbridled  profanity  and  beastliness. 
Mr.  Tennyson's  glory  is  to  have  portrayed  passion 
with  a  feminine  purity, — to  have  spiritualized  the 
voluptuousness  of  the  senses  and  the  imagination 
by  a  manly  reverence  for  woman's  worth,  and  a 
clear  intuition  of  '  the  perfect  law  of  liberty '  through 
which  the  true  humanity  develops  itself  in  the  form 
and  condition  of  an  animal  nature.  He  religiously 
observes  the  sanctities  of  love,  and  in  graceful  pictures 
lays  down  the  law  which  he  respects  : — 

"WoTild  you  learn  at  full 
How  passion  rose  tliro'  circumstantial  grades 
Beyond  all  grades  develop' d  ?   and  indeed 
I  had  not  staid  so  long  to  tell  you  all, 
But  whUe  I  mused  came  Memory  with  sad  eyes, 
Holding  the  folded  annals  of  my  youth ; 
And  while  I  mused,  Love  with  knit  hrows  went  by, 
And  with  a  flying  finger  swept  my  lips, 
And  spake,  '  Be  wise :   not  easily  forgiven 
Are  those,  who  setting  wide  the  doors,  that  bar 
The  secret  bridal  chambers  of  the  heart, 
Let  in  the  day.'     Here,  then,  my  words  have  end. 


TUNNYSOirS  POEMS.  63 

And  here  must  end  our  remarks  upon  The 
Gardener's  Daughter.  We  can  remember  no  love 
story  that  can  be  placed  beside  it  in  all  its  har- 
monious combination  of  excellences.  Passion  may- 
have  been  dramatised  more  intensely;  a  subtle 
grace  of  sentiment,  a  charm  of  evanescent  fra- 
grance, may  be  felt  more  in  some  of  Shelley's 
lyrics,  and  in  some  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  own ;  cha- 
racter may  certainly  be  given  with  more  force  of 
individuality;  and  unquestionably  a  story  more  ex- 
citing in  its  incidents  has  often  been  told  by 
novelist  and  poet:  but  for  its  delineation  of  the 
first  and  last  love  of  a  happy  man,  whose  moral 
nature  has  known  nothing  of  conflicts  with  itself, 
and  whose  mind  has  been  kept  healthy  by  the 
delightful  occupation  of  the  painter;  for  its  vivid 
descriptions  of  nature  in  some  of  her  loveliest  aspects ; 
for  the  sense  of  perfect  enjoyment  that  makes  the 
verse  flow  on  as  a  full  stream  through  a  rich  meadow- 
land,  and  for  the  touching  softening  of  the  tone  as 
the  speaker  tells  of  the  present  as  a  calm  resting- 
place  between  a  blessed  memory  and  a  blessed  hope, 
it  stands  unrivalled  in  English  literature.  And  yet 
it  never  deviates  from  the  familiar  path  of  our  English 
daily  life,  and  is  just  a  simple  picture  of  that  life 
as  a  joyous  heart  and  warm  afiection  may  make  it  for 
any  of  us. 


64  :essats. 

The  forms  of  poetry  whicli  Mr.  Tennyson  adopts 
are  not  capable  of  interpreting  the  more  complex 
moral  phenomena.  To  show  that  evil  natures  and 
evil  actions  have  their  appointed  work  in  the  world, 

That  someho-w  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  iU, 
To  pangs  of  nature,  sins  of  will, 
Defects  of  doubt  and  taints  of  blood, — 

will,  in  most  cases,  require  a  more  complex  machinery 
of  interacting  events  and  characters  than  he  puts 
in  operation.  Beautiful  actions  and  beautiful  cha- 
racters are  their  own  interpretation.  We  need  ask 
no  questions  as  to  the  motive  and  ground  of  their 
existence,  as  to  the  part  they  bear  in  the  harmonies 
of  the  universe.  But  to  throw  the  faintest  light 
of  hope  upon  the  lives  and  destinies  of  men  and 
women  who  seem  to  be  bom  only  to  cause  suffering 
to  themselves  and  others,  to  grow  worse  as  they 
grow  older,  and  to  harden  under  the  discipline  of 
the  moral  laws  of  the  universe,  the  mind  must 
look  far  back  into  the  determining  causes  of  cha- 
racter and  action,  far  forward  into  their  remote 
results,  and  far  round  upon  the  society  in  which 
they  develop  themselves,  and  upon  which  they  are 
exerting  a  constant  modifying  power,  through  its 
interests  and  sympathies.  Even  the  widest  glance 
forward,   backward,  and  around,   will  fail  often  to 


TUNNTSOIf'S  POEMS.  65 

detect  one  clue  to  the  mystery  of  evil;  and  faith 

can  only  throw  herself 

TJpon  the  great  world's  altar  stairs, 
That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God. 

So  far,  however,  as  the  problem  can  be  solved 
poetically — by  exhibiting,  that  is,  the  real  relations 
of  good  and  evil  in  particular  cases,  and  their  actual 
connexion  with  each  other  as  cause  and  effect,  so 
as  to  vindicate  at  once  the  eternal  law  of  right 
and  the  goodness  of  God  with  sufficient  clearness 
to  justify  the  expression  of  the  poet's  view  of  the 
world  in  a  rhythmical  form,  the  drama  or  the  epic 
will  alone  satisfy  the  necessities  of  the  case.  The 
lyric  poet  may  indeed  assert  in  glowing  strains  his 
own  conviction  of  the  ultimate  solution  as  a  general 
truth,  or  he  may  present  his  view  of  the  working 
of  any  great  moral  laws  in  lyric  allegories,  like 
The  Palace  of  Art  or  The  Vision  of  Sin :  but  no 
machinery  short  of  the  drama  or  epic  will  enable 
him  to  solve  practically,  and  to  the  conviction  of 
his  readers,  the  darker  problems  of  human  life.  And 
Mr.  Tennyson  abstains,  as  a  rule,  from  touching 
any  actions  of  human  beings  that  are  not,  so  to 
speak,  their  own  vindication,  and  which  do  not 
at  once  commend  themselves  to  the  sympathy  and 
conscience   by   their   own    gracefulness,    beauty,    or 

F 


66  USSATS. 

nobility,  the  happiness,  the  gentleness,  the  vitality 
of  mind  and  heart,  the  strength  and  courage  of 
will  they  exhibit. 

This,  however,  in   a  world  where   suifering  and 
sorrow  are  among  the  appointed  means  of  discipline 
for  the  good  as  well  as  among  the  punishments   of 
the  bad,  leaves  still  scope  enough  for  poetry  of  a 
severer  character  than  the  exquisite  and  happy  love- 
story  we  have  been  commenting  upon.     In  Bora  and 
Love  and  Duty  the  problem  the  poet  attempts  to  solve 
is  not  to  show  how  the  eternal  law  of  right  vindicates 
itself  against  man's  self-will  and  self-indulgence,  but 
how  the  goodness  of  God  vindicates  itself  against 
man's  self-sacrifice  in  behalf  of  the  right.     If  such 
vindication  were  impossible  in  the  typical  instances 
selected,  the  subjects  would  be  unfit  for  poetic  treat- 
ment.     Suffering,  unredeemed  by  its   effects,   may 
be  a  proper  subject  for  the  awe-struck   meditations 
of  any  man;  but  to  represent  it  under  rhythmical 
forms  which  are  symbolical  of  emotion  flowing  mu- 
sically forth  from  a  heart  rejoicing  in  its  own  thoughts 
about  the  objects  present  to  it,  would  be  just  mockery. 
It  is  only  Nero  that  fiddles  when  Rome  is  burning. 
The  true  poet  must  have  seen  the  final  issue  in  good 
of  the    struggle   he  portrays,   even  though   but    in 
a   faint   and    hazy   glimpse.      And   Mr.   Tennyson 


TSmVYSOJTS  POEMS.  67 

habitually  observes  this  law.  Even  poor,  perverted 
Simeon  Stylites  has  glimpses  of  his  mistake;  his 
wretched,  addled  brain  is  clouded,  but  the  poem 
closes  with  a  breaking  up  of  the  clouds.  And 
scarcely  any  other  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  poems  is  open 
to  the  faintest  suspicion  of  portraying  emotion  merely 
for  its  dramatic  interest.  In  Dora  and  Love  and 
Duty  the  suffering  is  felt  through  every  nerve.  The 
simple  unconscious  pathos  of  the  one,  and  the  high- 
wrought  reflective  passion  of  the  other,  meet  in  this 
expression  of  a  genuine  grief.  A  three-volume  novel 
could  not  impress  the  essential  characteristics  of  each 
tale  with  more  vividness  than  the  brief  poems,  in 
which  the  incidents  are  boldly  sketched  in  outline, 
and  the  crisis  of  the  passion  struck  off  with  a  rapid 
and  masterly  force  of  hand.  But  in  both  poems, 
when  the  battle  has  been  fought,  the  sharp  agony 
passed,  and  all  pretence  of  conventional  consolation 
abandoned,  the  peace  that  comes  of  victory  over  self 
shines  clearly  down  upon  the  hearts  of  the  victims, 
and  the  striking  drama,  the  pathetic  tale,  points 
forward  to  a  life  purified,  strengthened,  and  even 
softened  by  the  conflict.  As  a  mere  tale,  Dora 
might  have  ended  with  the  reconciliation;  it  is  the 
higher  instinct  of  the  moral  teacher  that  leads  Mr. 
Tennyson  to  add — 

p2 


68  :essats. 

So  those  four  abode 
Within  one  house  together;  and  as  years 
Went  forward,  Mary  took  another  mate; 
But  Dora  lived  unmarried  till  her  death. 

And  it  is  not  the  love  that 

Sits  brooding  on  the  ruins  of  a  life, 
Nightmare  of  youth,  the  spectre  of  himself, 

that  prompts  the  speaker  in  Love  and  Duty  to  close 
his  passionate  recollections  with  a  strain  of  exquisite 
sensibility  to  external  heanty  and  softened  visions 
of  the  future  of  his  lost  mistress : — 

Live — yet  live, — 
Shall  sharpest  pathos  blight  us,  knowing  all 
Life  needs  for  life  is  possible  to  will — 
Live  happy !   tend  thy  flowers :   be  tended  by 
My  blessing!   should  my  shadow  cross  thy  thoughts 
Too  sadly  for  their  peace,  so  put  it  back 
For  calmer  hours  in  memory's  darkest  hold; 
If  unforgotten !   should  it  cross  thy  dreams, 
So  might  it  come  like  one  that  looks  content. 
With  quiet  eyes  unfaithful  to  the  truth. 
And  point  thee  forward  to  a  distant  light, 
Or  seem  to  Hft  a  burthen  from  thy  heart 
And  leave  thee  freer,  till  thou  wake  refresh' d. 
Then  when  the  first  low  matin- chirp  hath  grown 
Full  quire,  and  morning  driVn  her  plow  of  pearl 
Far  furrowing  into  light  the  mounded  rack, 
Beyond  the  fair  green  field  >  and  eastern  sea. 

In  LocksUy  Hall  we  pass  to  a  poem  of  a  widely- 
different  strain.  It  is  against  the  fickleness  of  a 
woman,  not  against  circumstances  which  leave  her 


TIINNYSON'S  POEMS.  69 

image  pure  and  beautiful  in  the  memory,  that  the 
speaker  in  Locksley  Hall  has  to  find  a  resource. 
And  he  finds  it  in  the  excitement  of  enterprise  and 
action,  in  glowing  anticipations  of  progress  for  the 
human  race.  He  not  merely  recovers  his  sympathy 
with  his  fellow  men,  and  his  interest  in  life,  which 
had  been  paralysed  by  the  unworthiness  of  her  who 
represented  for  him  all  that  was  beautiful  and  good 
in  life, — but  he  recovers  it  on  higher  and  firmer 
ground.  What  he  lost  was  a  world  that  reflected 
his  own  unclouded  enjoyment,  his  buoyant  ardour 
and  high  spirits ;  a  world  appreciated  mainly  in  its 
capacity  for  affording  variety  to  his  perceptive  activity 
and  scope  for  his  unflagging  energies;  a  world  of 
which  he  himself,  with  his  pleasures  and  his  am- 
bitions, was  the  centre.  What  he  gains  is  a  world 
that  is  fulfilling  a  divine  purpose,  beside  which  his 
personal  enjoyments  are  infinitely  unimportant,  but 
in  aiding  and  apprehending  which  his  true  blessed- 
ness is  purified  and  deepened ;  a  world  in  which  he 
is  infinitely  small  and  insignificant,  but  greater  in 
his  brotherhood  with  the  race  which  is  evolving 
'  the  idea  of  humanity'  than  in  any  possible  grandeur 
of  his  own.  The  poem  has  been  called  'morbid,' 
a  phrase  that  has  acquired  a  perfectly  new  meaning 
of  late  years,  and  is  made  to  include  all  works  of 


70  :essats. 

art,  and  all  views  of  life  that  are  coloured  by  other 
than  comfortable  feelings.  If  Locksley  Hall,  as  a 
whole,  is  morbid,  then  it  is  morbid  to  represent 
a  young  man  rising  above  an  early  disappointment 
in  love,  and  coming  out  from  it  stronger,  less  sen- 
sitive, more  sinewed  for  action. 

What  has  led  certain  critics  to  call  the  poem 
morbid  is,  of  course,  that  the  speaker's  judgment 
of  his  age,  in  the  earlier  part,  is  coloured  by  his 
private  wrong  and  grief.  But  it  is  not  morbid, 
on  the  contrary,  it  is  perfectly  natural  and  right 
that  outrages  on  the  affections  should  disturb  the 
calmness  of  the  judgment,  that  acts  of  treacherous 
weakness  should  excite  indignation  and  scorn;  and 
the  view  of  the  world  natm-al  to  this  state  of  mind 
is  quite  as  true  as  that  current  upon  the  Stock 
Exchange,  and  not  at  all  more  partial  or  prejudiced. 
It  is  not,  indeed,  the  highest,  any  more  than  it 
is  a  complete  view,  but  it  is  higher  and  truer  than 
the  serene  contemplation  of  a  comfortable  Epicu- 
rean or  passionless  thinker.  There  is  no  cynicism 
in  the  'fine  curses'  of  Locksley  Hall;  they  are  not 
the  poisonouB  exhalations  of  a  corrupted  nature,  but 
the  thunder  and  lightning  that  clear  the  air  of  what 
is  foul,  the  forces  by  which  a  loving  and  poetical 
mind,  not  yet  calmed  and  strengthened  by  experience 


t:e]swyson's  poems.  71 

and  general  principles,  repels  unaccustomed  outrage 
and  wrong.  With  what  a  rich  emotion  he  recals 
his  earlj  recollections!  Sea,  sandy  shore  and  sky 
have  been  for  him  a  perpetual  fountain  of  beauty 
and  of  joy,  his  youth  a  perpetual  feast  of  imaginative 
knowledge  and  pictorial  glory. 

Many  a  night  from  yonder  ivied  casement,  ere  I  went  to  rest, 
Did  I  look  on.  great  Orion  sloping  slowly  to  tlie  west. 

Many  a  night  I  saw  the  Pleiads,  rising  thro'  the  mellow  shade. 
Glitter  like  a  swarm  of  fire-flies  tangled  in  a  silver  braid. 

Here  about  the  beach  I  wander' d,  nourishing  a  youth  sublime 
With  the  fairy  tales  of  Science,  and  the  long  result  of  Time. 

With  what  a  touching  air  of  tenderness  and  pro- 
tection he  watches  the  young  girl  whom  he  loves 
in  secret,  and  whose  paleness  and  thinness  excite 
his  pity  as  well  as  his  hope.  How  rapturously, 
when  she  avows  her  love,  he  soars  up  in  his  joy 
with  a  flight  that  would  be  tumultuous  but  for  the 
swiftness  of  the  motion, — unsteady  but  for  the  sub- 
stantial massiveness  of  thought,  and  the  grand  poising 
sweep  of  the  lyric  power  that  sustains  it : — 

Love  took  up   the  glass  of  Time,  and  turned  it  in  his  glowing 

hands ; 
Every  moment,  lightly  shaken,  ran  itself  in  golden  sands. 

Love  took  up  the  harp  of  Life,  and  smote  on  all  the  chords  with 

might ; 
Smote  the  chord  of  Self,  that,  trembling,  passed  in  music  out  of 

sight. 


72  :essats. 

Many  a  morning  on  the  moorland  did  we  hear  the  copses  ring, 
And   her   whisper   throng' d   my   pulses   with  the   fulness    of   the 
Spring. 

Many  an  evening  by  the  waters  did  we  watch  the  stately  ships, 
And  our  spirits  rush'd  together  at  the  touching  of  the  lips. 

Then  how  pathetic  the  sudden  fall,  the  modulation 
by  which  he  passes  from  the  key  of  rapture  to  that 
of  despair: — 

0  my  cousin,  shaUow-hearted !   0  my  Amy,  mine  no  more ! 
0  the  dreary,  dreary  moorland!    0  the  barren,  barren  shore! 

And  here  and  there,  through  all  that  storm  of  anger, 
sarcasm,  contempt,  denunciation  that  follows,  there 
sounds  a  note  of  unutterable  tenderness  which  gives 
to  the  whole  movement  a  prevailing  character  of  pain 
and  anguish,  of  moral  desolation,  rather  than  of 
wrath  and  vengeance.  Not  till  this  mood  exhausts 
itself,  and  the  mind  of  the  speaker  turns  to  action 
as  a  resource  against  despair,  does  he  realise  all 
that  he  has  lost.  Not  only  is  his  love  uprooted, 
— his  hope,  his  faith  in  the  world  have  perished  in 
that  lightning  flash ;  and  he  turns  again  to  his 
glorious  youth,  but  now  only  to  sound  the  gulf 
that  separates  him  from  it.  The  noble  aspirations, 
the  ardent  hopes,  the  sanguine  prophecies  of  earlier 
years  roll  in  rich  pomp  of  music  and  of  picture  before 
us ;  but  it  is  the  cloud-pageantry  of  the  boy's  day- 
dream which  breaks  up   to  reveal  the  world  as   it 


TENNYSON' S  FOEMS.  73 

appears  now  to  the  'palsied  heart'  and  'jaundiced 
eje'  of  the  man.  Yet,  in  the  midst  of  this  dis- 
tempered vision  are  seen  glimpses  of  a  deeper  truth, 
The  eternal  law  of  progress  is  not  broken  tecause 
the  individual  man  is  shipwrecked.  It  is  hut  a 
momentary  glimpse,  and  offers  no  firm  footing.  His 
personal  happiness,  after  all,  is  what  concerns  each 
person.  Here,  at  least,  in  this  convention-ridden, 
Mammon-worshipping  Europe,  where  the  passions 
are  cramped,  and  action  that  would  give  scope  to 
passionate  energy  impossible,  the  individual  has  no 
chance.  But  in  some  less  advanced  civilization, 
where  the  individual  is  freer  if  the  race  he  less 
forward,  there  may  be  hope.  And  a  picture  of  the 
tropics  rises  before  the  imagination,  dashed  off  in 
a  few  strokes  of  marvellous  breadth  and  richness  of 
colour : — 

There  to  wander  far  away, 
On  from  island  luito  island  at  the  gateways  of  the  day. 

Larger  constellations  huming,  meUow  moons  and  happy  skies, 
Breadths  of  tropic  shade  and  palms  in  cluster,  knots  of  Paradise. 

Never  comes  the  trader,  never  floats  an  European  flag, 
Slides  the  bird  o'er  lustrous  woodland,  droops  the  trailer  from  the 
crag; 

Droops  the  heavy -blossomed  bower,  hangs  the  heavy-fruited  tree — 
Summer  isles  of  Eden  lying  in  dark-purple  spheres  of  sea. 

But  the  deeper  nature  of  the  man  controls  the  de- 
lusion of  the  fancy ;  his  heart,  reason,  and  conscience 


74  JSSSATS. 

revolt  against  the  escape  into  a  mere  savage  freedom  ; 
they  will  not  allow  him  to  drop  out  of  the  van  of 
the  advancing  host;  and  manly  courage  comes  with 
the  great  thought  of  a  society  that  is  rapidly  fulfilling 
the  idea  of  humanity ;  the  personal  unhappiness,  the 
private  wrong,  the  bitterness  of  outraged  affection, 
give  way  before  the  upswelling  sympathy  with  the 
triumph  of  the  race  to  which  he  belongs.  The 
passion  has  passed  in  the  rush  of  words  that  gave 
it  expression,  and  life  shines  clear  again,  no  longer 
on  the  tender-hearted,  imaginative  boy,  but  on  the 
man 

Made  weak  by  time  and  fate,  but  strong  in  will, 
To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield. 

There  is  no  poem  of  Tennyson's  more  strikingly 
dramatic  throughout  than  this,  and  none  in  which 
an  age  weakened  by  sentimental  indulgence  may  find 
thoughts  more  suggestive  of  its  recovery  to  manly 
vigour  and  endurance.  And  if,  in  works  of  art, 
artistic  beauty  alone  be  looked  for,  no  poem  can  be 
more  rich  in  colour,  more  rapid  in  movement,  more 
abundant  in  exquisite  beauties  of  detail.  The  verse 
is  a  marvel  of  force  and  grace, — full,  majestic,  im- 
petuous,— thundering  on  like  the  downrush  of  a 
mighty  cataract,  with  its  infinite  pulsations  of  light, 
its   dazzling  interradiation   of  changing  forms   and 


Ti:NKYS02rS  POEMS.  75 

colours — the  avqptdfiov  yeXaafia  translated  into  sound. 
Its  grand  music,  poured,  full  of  grief  and  indigna- 
tion, to  the  long  swell  of  the  waves  upon  the  flat 
sandy  shore,  recals  the  Homeric 

Btj  5'  aKfOJv  irapa  Oiva  iro\v(p\otcr$oLo  6a\a(T<rris' 
XloWa  5*   eTTeiT    airavevde  kiwi/  ijpaff  6  ytpatos — ■ 

no  less  by  its  majesty  of  rhythm  than  by  the  likeness 
of  the  locality. 

The  four  principal  poems  in  the  third  series  of 
Mr.  Tennyson's  works  which  depict  love  in  its 
various  influences  upon  different  characters  and  under 
differing  circumstances  have  been  now  more  or  less 
fully  touched  on ;  and  their  general  characteristic  is, 
that  the  passion  there  shown  in  operation  is  a  purify- 
ing, strengthening,  sustaining  power ;  that  it  allies 
itself  with  conscience  and  reason,  and  braces  instead 
of  debilitating  the  will.  The  small  poem  called 
Fatima  is  the  only  instance  in  which  Mr.  Tennyson 
has  expended  his  powers  in  portraying  any  love  that 
incapacitates  for  the  common  duties  of  life,  unless 
the  two  Marianas  be  regarded  in  this  light,  which 
would  be  a  perverse  misconception  of  their  main 
purpose.  In  LocksJey  Hall  the  ghost  of  a  murdered 
love  is  fairly  laid,  and  the  man  comes  out  of  his 
conflict  the  stronger  and  the  clearer  for  his  experience. 
Nothing  that  can  with  any  propriety  be  called  morbid 


76  ESSAYS. 

or  unhealthy  belongs  to  any  of  the  great  love  poems 
in  the  collection ;  and  surely  the  view  of  the  relation 
of  the  sexes  in  the  Princess  is  as  sound  a  basis  for 
a  noble  life  as  was  ever  propounded.  It  would  be 
singular  if,  with  such  antecedents,  Mr.  Tennyson 
should,  in  the  maturity  of  his  intellect  and  expe- 
rience, have  descended  to  exhibit  the  influence  of 
love  upon  a  weak  and  worthless  character,  and  have 
chosen  for  that  purpose  a  melodramatic  story  of 
suicide,  murder,  and  madness,  dished  up  for  popular 
applause  with  vehement  invective  on  the  vices  of 
the  English  nation,  and  claptrap  appeals  to  the  war- 
feeling  of  the  day.  This,  however,  is  what  we 
are  asked  to  believe  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  latest  pro- 
duction, Maud,  by  the  loudest  professional  critics  of 
the  journals  and  magazines.  The  critics  give'  us 
some  gauge  of  their  opinion  by  tracing  Mr.  Tenny- 
son's gradual  degradation  through  the  Princess,  lower 
still  in  In  Memoriam,  to  its  climax  of  weakness 
and  absurdity  in  Maud ;  and  it  is  but  justice  to 
say  that  these  opinions  are  not  now  for  the  first 
time  put  forth  on  the  provocation  of  the  last-named 
poem,  but  appear  to  be  the  deliberate  convictions 
of  the  writers.  We  believe  that  both  the  Princess 
and  In  Memoriam  are  in  their  sixth  edition,  which, 
apart  from   private   experience,   necessarily  limited, 


THIfNTSON'S  POEMS.  77 

of  the  impression  tlie  works  have  produced,  leads 
to  the  conclusion  that  these  writers  do  not  in  this 
case  fairly  represent  the  opinion  of  the  English  public. 
Whether  they  represent  it  any  better  in  respect  to 
Maud  remains  to  be  seen.  Meanwhile  it  is  well 
not  to  be  frightened  out  of  the  enjoyment  of  fine 
poetry,  and  out  of  the  instruction  to  be  gained 
from  a  great  poet's  views  of  life,  as  exhibited  dra- 
matically in  the  destiny  of  a  particular  sort  of  cha- 
racter subjected  to  a  particular  set  of  influences,  by 
such  epithets  as  '  morbid,'  '  hysterical/  '  spasmodic,' 
which  may  mean  one  thing  or  another,  according 
to  the  sense,  discrimination  and  sympathy  of  the 
man  who  applies  them. 

There  is  little  question  as  to  the  artistic  merits 
of  Maud.  It  is  only  the  aim  of  the  poet  that  has 
been  assailed ;  his  execution  is  generally  admitted 
to  be  successful.  It  may  be  at  once  conceded  that 
the  writer  of  the  fragments  of  a  life  which  tell  the 
story  of  Maudj  is  not  in  a  comfortable  state  of  mind 
when  he  begins  his  record ;  and  that  if  a  gentleman 
were  to  utter  such  sentiments  at  a  board  of  railway 
directors,  or  at  a  marriage  breakfast,  he  might  not 
improperly  be  called  hysterical.  Like  the  hero  of 
Locksley  Hall,  his  view  of  the  life  around  him,  of 
the  world  in  which  his  lot  is  cast,  has  been  coloured 


78  ASSAYS. 

by  a  grievous  personal  calamity;  and  the  character 
of  the  man  is  originally  one  in  which  the  sensi- 
bilities are  keen  and  delicate,  the  speculative  element 
strong,  the  practical  judgment  unsteady,  the  will 
and  active  energies  comparatively  feeble.  A  Shelley 
or  a  Keats  may  stand  for  example  of  his  type;  not 
perfect  men,  certainly,  but  scarcely  so  contemptible 
as  not  to  possess  both  dramatic  interest  and  some  claim 
to  human  sympathy.  Chatterton,  a  much  lower  type 
than  either,  has  been  thought  a  subject  of  psycho- 
logical and  moral  interest,  in  spite  or  in  consequence 
of  the  vulgar,  petulant,  weak  melodrama  of  his  life 
and  death.  You  see,  God  makes  these  morbid, 
hysterical,  spasmodic  individuals  occasionally,  and 
they  have  various  fates;  some  die  without  a  sign; 
others  try  the  world,  and  dash  themselves  dead 
against  its  bars;  some  few  utter  their  passionate 
desires,  their  weak  complaints,  their  ecstatic  raptures 
in  snatches  of  song  that  make  the  world  delirious 
with  delight, — and  somehow,  for  their  sake  the  class 
becomes  interesting,  and  we  are  at  times  inclined 
to  measure  the  spiritual  capacity  of  an  age  by  its 
treatment  of  these  weak  souls, — by  the  fact,  whether 
the  general  constitution  of  society  cherishes  such 
souls  into  divine  lovers  and  singers  of  the  beautiful, 
or  lashes  and  starves  and  chains  them  into  moping 


TENN-YSOirS  POEMS.  79 

idiots  and  howling  madmen.  The  autobiographer 
of  Maud  belongs  to  this  class  by  temperament,  as 
anyone  may  understand  from  the  turn  of  his  angry 
thoughts  to  those  social  evils  which  must  and  ought 
to  excite  indignation  and  scorn  in  gentle  and  loving 
natures  that  are  at  the  same  time  inspired  with 
generous  and  lofty  ideas;  from  the  speculative  enig- 
mas he  torments  himself  with  at  the  prevalence 
of  rapine  and  pain  in  creation,  at  the  insignificance 
of  man  in  a  boundless  universe,  subject  to  iron  laws  ; 
from  the  penetrating  tenderness,  the  rich  fancy,  the 
childlike  naivete  of  his  love  for  the  young  girl  who 
saves  him  from  himself  and  his  dark  dreams.  There 
lies  in  such  a  character,  from  the  beginning,  the 
capacity  for  weakness  and  misery,  for  crime  and 
madness.  That  capacity  is  inseparable  from  keen 
sensibility,  powerful  emotions,  and  active  imagination ; 
and  if  events  happen  which  paralyze  the  will  already 
feeble,  turn  the  flow  of  feeling  into  a  stream  of 
bitterness,  and  present  to  the  imagination  a  world 
of  wrong  and  suffering,  the  capacity  fulfils  itself 
according  to  the  force  and  direction  of  the  events. 
In  Maud  the  tendency  meets  with  events  that 
carry  it  on  through  these  stages ;  and  the  question 
is  whether  any  one  of  these  events  is  impossible 
or  improbable,  whether  English  society  is  misrepre- 


80  ESSAYS. 

sented  when  it  is  made  capable  of  fumisliing  the 
unwholesome  nutriment  for  such  a  character.  It 
would  rather  seem  as  if  the  only  improbable  incident 
in  the  whole  story  were  that  which  redeems  society 
from  a  wholesale  charge;  as  if  the  daughter  of 
the  millionaire,  the  sister  of  '  the  dandy-despot,  the 
oiled  and  curled  Assyrian  bull,'  were  the  least  likely 
character  of  the  whole  group.  God  be  thanked, 
however,  there  are  such  girls ;  and  many  a  noble 
woman — like  the  Princess  Ida — has  given  her  heart 
out  of  pity  to  a  man  whose  energy  and  hope  she 
saw  crushed  for  want  of  sympathy,  and  would  en- 
dorse these  lines : 

Perhaps  the  smile  and  tender  tone 
Came  out  of  her  pitying  womanhood, 

For  am  I  not,  am  I  not,  here  alone 
So  many  a  summer  since  she  died, 

My  mother,  who  was  so  gentle  and  good? 

And  many  a  man  who  seems  to  himseK  to  be  living 
on  without  motive,  '  a  death  in  life, '  could  say, 

Ah !  what  shall  I  he  at  fifty, 

Should  Nature  keep  me  alive. 

If  I  find  the  world  so  hitter 

When  I  am  hut  twenty-five? 

Yet,  if  she  were  not  a  cheat. 

If  Maud  were  all  that  she  seem'd. 

And  her  smile  were  all  that  I  dream' d. 

Then  the  world  were  not  so  bitter 

But  a  smile  could  make  it  sweet. 


TUNNYSON'S  POEMS.  81 

No  doubt  it  is  only  weak  characters  wlio  are 
affected  in  this  way.  To  strong  men  the  world  is 
not  made  bitter  by  a  father's  ruin  and  suicide,  by 
the  prevalence  of  meanness  and  cruelty,  by  con- 
temptuous neglect,  and  general  absence  of  sympathy. 
Nor  would  a  girl's  smile  atone  to  them  for  such 
calamities  as  do  affect  them.  So  weakness  has  its 
compensation. 

But  then,  some  one  will  say,  if  the  poet's  in- 
tention were  to  exhibit  the  restorative  power  of  love 
over  a  delicate  and  beautiful  mind  overthrown  by 
circumstances. 

Like  sweet  bells  jangled,  out  of  tune,  and  harsh, — 

and  if,  in  respect  to  this  intention,  we  allow  the 
exhibition  of  the  disease  in  order  to  feel  the  fall 
force  of  the  restoring  influence,  and  of  course  are 
prepared  that  the  love  should  be  of  a  kind  correspond- 
ing to  the  character, — rapturous,  fanciful,  childish, 
fitted  more  for  a  Southern  woman  like  Juliet,  as 
one  of  the  best  critics  of  Maud  has  remarked,  than 
for  an  Englishman, — why  does  not  the  poet  carry 
out  his  intention,  and  conduct  his  story  to  a  happy 
close?  Why,  good  sir  or  madam,  does  not  Shak- 
speare  let  Juliet  and  her  Romeo  adorn  Verona  with 
troops  of  little  Juliets  and  Eomeos,  to  do  as  their 
papa  and  mamma  did  before  them  ?      Why  does  not 

G 


82  ASSAYS. 

Cordelia  live  to  comfort  Lear  in  his  old  age,  re- 
stored to  true  appreciation  of  his  daughters?  Why- 
does  Ophelia  drown  in  a  ditch;  and  Hamlet,  after 
murdering  Polonius,  die  by  chance  medley?  Why 
are  not  Othello's  eyes  opened  before,  instead  of  after 
his  fatal  deed,  and  he  and  Desdemona  allowed  to 
spend  the  rest  of  their  days  in  peace  and  mutual 
trust  ?  Is  it,  think  you,  because  Shakspeare  belongs 
to  the  hysterical,  morbid,  spasmodic  school,  and 
likes  the  violent  excitement  of  melodramatic  in- 
cident? We  should  be  sorry  to  stake  much  upon 
the  reception  any  of  these  poetic  issues  would  meet 
with  from  certain  critics,  if  they  now  for  the  first 
time  came  up  for  judgment.  Perhaps  in  all  these 
cases  he  had  some  vague  design  of  moving  certain 
passions  which  the  older  critics  knew  by  the  name  of 
pity  and  terror,  and  to  which  one  who  was  himself 
something  of  a  poet — the  author  of  Samson  Agonistes 
— refers  approvingly,  on  the  authority  of  Aristotle,  as 
the  justifying  motive  of  tragedy.  Perhaps,  too,  lie 
might  think  it  his  business,  in  delineating  particular 
characters,  to  express  in  their  destiny  his  view  of 
the  general  condition  of  society,  as  tested  by  the 
fate  and  fortunes  of  such  characters.  And  possibly 
Mr.  Tennyson  may  think  himself  justified  in  pre- 
senting a  story  that  does  not  end  happily,  for  both 


TJENNTSOJfPS  POEMS.  83 

these  reasons.  It  may  appear  to  him  that  'the 
course  of  true  love'  would  be  unlikely  to  'run 
smooth'  under  the  circumstances  of  Maud  and  her 
lover,  combined  with  the  conditions  of  English 
modern  life;  that  the  man  had  not  the  coolness  and 
self-control  to  master  the  circumstances ;  and  that 
there  was  not  in  society  the  generosity  and  disregard 
of  rank  and  money  necessary  to  allow  the  restorative 
influence  of  Maud's  affection  to  work  out  its  cure. 
Divest  the  story  for  a  moment  of  its  lyric  elevation, 
and  compare  it  with  our  greatest  novelist's  treatment 
of  a  somewhat  kindred  case.  Suppose  Mr.  Barnes 
Newcome  had  not  been  a  coward  as  well  as  a  brute, 
and  had  found  his  sister  Ethel  holding  a  tete-h-tete 
in  the  garden  with  her  cousin  Clive,  after  an  evening 
party  to  which  the  Most  Noble  the  Marquis  of 
Farintosh  had  been  invited  expressly  to  conclude  his 
courtship, — is  it  not  possible  that  Mr.  Barnes  and 
his  cousin  might  have  enacted  the  scene  between 
the  'Assyrian  bull'  and  Maud's  lover?  The  phy- 
sical courage  of  the  Assyrian  bull  is  quite  as  true, 
to  say  the  least,  to  the  real  types  of  his  class  as 
the  physical  cowardice  of  Barnes  Newcome.  But 
the  object  of  the  novelist  not  being  to  excite  pity 
and  terror,  he  developes  the  selfishness  and  Mammon- 
worship  of  English  rich  people  to  other  consequences 
G2 


84  ESSAYS. 

and  in  another  direction.  The  poet  takes  his  course, 
too,  with  equal  effect  towards  carrying  out  his  design, 
and  without  violating,  so  far  as  we  see,  the  essential 
contemporary  truth  of  his  story;  while  he  is  thus 
enabled  to  exhibit  some  of  the  eternal  elements  of 
tragedy  still  in  operation  among  us. 

We  need  say  nothing  of  the  skill  and  beauty 
with  which  the  remorse  of  the  murderer  is  painted. 
The  wonderful  power  of  the  strains  in  which  the 
successive  stages  of  this  feeling  are  represented,  is 
admitted  on  all  hands.  English  literature  has 
nothing  more  dramatically  expressive  of  a  mind 
on  the  verge  of  overthrow,  than  the  verses  in  which 
the  shell  on  the  Brittany  coast  serves  as  text; 
nothing  that  presents  the  incipient  stage  of  madness, 
springing  from  the  wrecked  affections,  with  more  of 
reality  and  pathos  than  the  poem,  '  Oh !  that  'twere 
possible,'  now  recovered  from  the  pages  of  a  long- 
forgotten  miscellany,  and  set  as  a  jewel  amid  jewels ; 
nothing  that  surpasses  in  truth  and  terrible  force 
the  madhouse  soliloquy,  '  Dead,  long  dead !'  If  the 
poem  had  ended  there,  'the  strangest  anti-climax 
that  we  ever  remember  to  have  read'  would  not 
have  offended  a  recent  critic.  We  fear  that  in 
that  case,  true  enough  to  nature  as  it  might  have 
been,  the  climax  would   have    come   in   for  blame 


TENNYSON'S  POEMS.  85 

of  the  opposite  character,  and  the  poet  have  been 
found  fault  with  for  leaving  his  readers  to  dwell 
upon  horrible  impressions  without  relief  We  are 
sure  that  no  poet  deserving  the  name  would  choose 
such  an  ending  where  any  other  was  possible.  But 
men  do  recover  from  madness,  and  can — though 
with  an  awe-struck  sense  of  their  own  unfitness  for 
life,  a  nervous  apprehension  that  paralyzes  energy 
and  action, — be  raised  to  interest  themselves  in  some- 
thing out  of  themselves  and  their  miseries.  And 
Mr.  Tennyson,  who  introduces  his  hero  breathing 
scorn  and  indignation  on  the  meanness  and  little- 
ness of  a  society,  where  the  vices  of  individuals 
are  not  obscured  and  compensated  by  any  conscious 
noble  aim  of  the  commonwealth,  dismisses  him, 
cheered  and  strengthened  by  knowing  that  the 
British  nation  has  risen  for  a  time  to  a  conscious- 
ness of  a  great  purpose, — has  awaked  out  of  its 
commercial  epicureanism,  and  roused  itself  to  fight 
a  battle  for  the  right  and  the  good.  In  sympathy 
with  a  grand  purpose  and  a  high  resolve  animating  his 
countrymen,  the  dreary  phantom  that  had  haunted 
him  departs ;  he  knows  that  his  love  has  forgiven 
him  the  injury  that  his  passionate  heart  caused  her; 
and  he  can  wait,  calm  and  hopeful,  till  death  re- 
unites them. 


86  ESSAYS. 

The  fact  is,  that  Mr.  Tennyson,  without  aban- 
doning his  lyric  forms,  has  in  Maud  written  a 
tragedy — a  work,  that  is,  which  demands  to  be 
judged,  not  by  the  intrinsic  goodness  and  beauty 
of  the  actions  and  emotions  depicted,  but  by  their 
relation  to  character ;  that  character,  again,  being  not 
only  an  interesting  study  in  itself  and  moving  our 
sympathy,  but  being  related  dynamically  to  the 
society  of  the  time  which  serves  as  the  background 
of  the  picture,  and  thus  displaying  the  characteristics 
of  the  society  by  showing  its  influence,  under  par- 
ticular circumstances,  upon  the  character  selected. 
Mr.  Tennyson's  critics  have  for  the  most  part  read 
the  poem  as  if  its  purpose  were  to  hold  up  an  ex- 
ample for  our  imitation,  and  have  condemned  it 
because,  viewed  in  this  light,  it  offers  nothing  but 
a  nature  of  over-excitable  sensibilities,  first  rendered 
moody  by  misfortune,  then  driven  mad  by  its  own 
crime,  and  finally  recovered  to  a  weak  exultation  in 
a  noble  enterprise  it  has  not  the  manliness  to  share. 
But  no  one  feels  that  Shakspeare  is  immoral  in 
making  Othello  kill  himself;  no  one  attributes  the 
cynicism  of  Mephistopheles  to  Goethe. 

Why  then  should  the  author  of  The  Gardener  s 
Daughter  be  set  down  as  morbid? — the  author  of 
LocksUy  Hall  as  one  who  sees  no  worth  in  action? — 


TENNYSOI^S  FOEMS.  87 

the  author  of  Dora  as  a  selfish  dreamer,  who  knows 
nothing  of  duty?  Let  us  try  and  be  as  just  to  the 
great  men  that  live  amongst  us,  as  to  those  who  are 
beyond  our  praise  or  blame.  Let  us  not  stone 
our  own  prophets,  while  we  build  the  tombs  of  the 
men  who  prophesied  to  our  forefathers. 

It  is  a  step  back  in  respect  of  date  to  speak  of 
The  Princess  after  Maud;  but  while  the  latter  is 
the  deepest  and  most  tragical  exhibition  of  the  action 
of  love  upon  the  character  and  destiny  of  an  indi- 
vidual that  Mr.  Tennyson  has  given  to  the  world, 
the  former  treats  the  sexual  relations  in  their  most 
comprehensive  form,  and  may  so  be  considered  as 
containing  implicitly  all  individual  love-poems,  as 
the  poetical  statement  of  the  law  which  they  all 
exhibit  in  particular  instances.  In  its  philosophical 
aim,  therefore,  The  Princess  belongs  to  the  same 
class  of  poems  as  The  Palace  of  Art  and  The  Vision 
of  Sin,  in  both  of  which  a  law  of  life  is  presented, 
not  as  modified  by  the  peculiar  nature  and  circum- 
stances of  an  individual,  but  in  its  absolute  univer- 
sality as  a  law  for  the  human  race.  It  is  natm-al 
enough  that  in  an  age  when  absolute  and  universal 
solutions  are  sought  not  only  for  physical  phenomena, 
but  also  for  mental  and  social, — when  not  only  the 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  and  the  complex 


88  ASSAYS. 

relations  of  the  constituent  elements  of  organic 
matter,  but  the  course  of  thought — the  growth,  decay, 
and  character  of  states, — in  a  word,  the  whole  life 
of  the  individual,  and  the  collective  life  of  humanity, 
are  supposed  to  be  traceable  to  the  orderly  operation 
of  fixed  principles, — it  is  natural  that,  fascinated  by 
the  grandeur  of  speculations  of  this  immensity,  the 
poet,  too,  should  attempt  to  rise  above  the  portraiture 
of  individual  life  to  the  exhibition,  in  an  absolute 
form,  of  the  principles  that  determine  individual  life. 
Always,  indeed,  it  has  been  held  that  the  highest 
poetry  gave  the  law  as  well  as  the  special  instance; 
interpreted  humanity  as  well  as  some  individual  life ; 
and  became  highest  by  blending,  as  they  say,  the 
universal  with  the  particular.  This,  however,  simply 
means  that  true  portraiture  of  individual  life  neces- 
sarily involves  generic  and  specific,  as  well  as  in- 
dividual truth;  that  John  or  Mary  must  be  man 
and  woman — English  man  and  English  woman — to 
be  a  pair  of  real  human  beings,  under  the  influence 
of  any  particular  feelings.  Such  poems  as  those 
mentioned  above  drop  the  individual  and  the  special 
altogether,  and  attempt  to  present  a  law  of  human 
nature  in  operation  upon  beings  who  are  human 
without  being  particular  men  or  women.  Now,  it 
is  the  very  essence  of  poetry  to  present,  not  abstract 


T:E]f^NYSOIPS  POEMS.  89 

propositions  to  the  intellect,  but  concrete  real  truth 
to  the  senses,  the  affections, — to  the  whole  man, 
in  short;  and  this  can  be  done  only  by  presenting 
objects  as  they  exist  and  act  upon  one  another, 
and  upon  our  minds,  in  the  real  world, — not  logical 
objects  formed  by  the  action  of  our  analytic  faculty, 
and  abstracted  from  reality.  Such  universality  as 
poetry  has  is  derived  from  the  fact,  that  the  indi- 
vidual contains  the  genus  and  the  species,  and  that 
the  pure  universal  of  the  intellect  has  no  counter- 
part in  nature,  and  is  therefore  not  a  truth  in  the 
sense  in  which  poetry  concerns  itself  with  truth. 
And  poets  who  attempt  to  get  beyond  individual 
truth,  implicitly  containing  generic  and  specific  truth, 
fall  into  one  of  two  mistakes :  they  either  present 
the  truth  as  abstract  statement,  dressed  up  in  rhe- 
torical ornament,  and  so  fail  to  fulfil  the  true  function 
of  their  genius, — or,  feeling  the  necessity  of  avoid- 
ing this,  they  invent  a  fictitious  allegorical  machinery, 
with  which  they  obscure  the  statement,  and  are, 
in  fact,  treating  a  special  instance,  with  this  differ- 
ence,— that  the  individual  traits  are  fanciful  and 
arbitrary,  instead  of  being  those  of  actual  experience. 
The  result,  in  the  latter  case,  is  that  the  reader 
makes  the  universality  by  his  abstraction  of  details, 
getting,    at    last,    back    to   a    mere    abstract    state- 


90  :essays. 

ment,  and  so  loses  all  the  force  of  true  poetic 
teaching;  while,  as  the  only  compensation,  his  ima- 
gination is  amused  by  the  ingenuity  and  beauty 
of  the  machinery.  And,  in  both  cases,  by  aiming 
at  an  universality  which  belongs  to  science,  poetry- 
loses  her  true  prerogative;  and  no  longer  command- 
ing the  sympathies,  fails  to  teach, — becoming  at 
once  less  usefal  and  less  delightful.  The  Palace 
of  Art  and  The  Vision  of  Sin  are  instances  of 
the  one  mode  of  treatment ;  The  Two  Voices  may 
partly  serve  to  illustrate  the  other.  All  three 
contain  exquisite  detail,  but  the  whole  fails  of  its 
effect.  And  were  we  compelled  to  regard  The 
Princess  solely  as  an  attempt  to  exhibit  the  action 
and  justification  of  sexual  love  as  an  universal  law 
of  human  life,  as  an  allegory,  aiming  at  scientific 
generality,  a  similar  failure  would  certainly  have 
to  be  recorded.  The  machinery  would,  in  that  case, 
be  overdone — would  attract  the  attention  to  detail 
quite  as  much  as  if  a  merely  common  love-story 
were  being  told,  without  giving  the  force  of  reality, 
— and  would,  by  the  preponderance  of  detail  and 
traits  of  individuality  and  special  circumstance,  de- 
rogate from  the  pure  universality  of  the  problem. 
But,  in  fact.  The  Princess  is  'earnest  wed  with 
sport,' — the   attempt  of  a  mind,  whose   feeling  for 


THKNTSON'S  POEMS.  91 

the  beautiful  and  the  true  is  stronger  than  its  humour 
and  fun,  to  treat  certain  modem  mistakes  about  the 
true  relation  of  man  and  woman  with  good-humoured 
satire,  and  in  spite  of  this  intention  impelled  to 
a  strain  of  serious  thought  and  impassioned  feeling. 
It  is  a  laugh  subsiding  into  a  loving  smile, — playful 
irony  surprised  into  tenderness  and  tears.  But 
because  the  commencement  is  mock-heroic,  and  the 
machinery  highly  fanciful — though  not  so  removed 
from  possibility  as  to  baffle  belief  and  distress  the 
judgment, — the  earnest  close  seems  rather  the  poet's 
own  utterance  of  his  views  of  the  relations  of  the 
sexes,  than  the  inherent  moral  of  the  story.  And 
admiring,  as  all  must,  the  sweet  tenderness  and 
noble  thought  of  the  dialogue  that  ends  the  poem, 
— the  magnificence,  at  once  so  rich  and  tasteful,  of 
the  description  of  the  woman's  college,  and  of  the 
scenery  about  it, — the  exquisite  sentiment  and  finish 
of  the  interspersed  songs  and  idylls, — the  movement 
and  dramatic  life  of  the  whole  poem, — one  cannot 
help  regi-etting  that  the  longest,  and  in  some  respects 
the  finest,  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  productions  should 
have  been  fairly  characterized  by  him  as  '  A  Medley,' 
and  that  he  should  have  been  obliged  at  last  to 
say,— 

Then  rose  a  little  feud  betwixt  the  two — 
Betwixt  the  mockers  and  the  realists : 


92  JSSSATS. 

And  I,  betwixt  tliem  both,  to  please  them  both, 

And  yet  to  give  the  story  as  it  rose, 

I  moved  as  in  a  strange  diagonal, 

And  maybe  neither  pleased  myself  nor  them. 

However,  the  incongruitj  is  there,  and  we  must 
make  the  best  of  it.  It  interferes,  somewhat,  with 
our  interest  in  the  loves  of  the  Prince  and  Princess 
as  actual  human  beings,  and  deprives  the  grand 
philosophic  sentiment  at  the  close  of  the  impressive- 
ness  that  belongs  to  the  moral  of  an  actual  human 
story.  On  the  other  hand,  the  impulse  towards  an 
earnest  treatment  of  the  subject,  struggling  through 
and  finally  overcoming  the  mock-heroic,  gives  the 
advantage  of  a  contrast,  and  we  pass  from  the  one 
to  the  other  with  a  heightened  zest  and  relish. 
Altogether,  if  we  give  om'selves  up  to  the  poet — 
not  setting  rules  for  him,  but  letting  him  take  us 
along  as  he  will,  and  accepting  his  account  of  the 
origin  and  motives  of  his  poem, — we  shall  find  nothing 
wanting  to  a  complete  work  of  art,  which  may  not 
be  the  most  profound  or  affecting  treatment  of  a 
great  truth,  but  which,  flowering  thick  with  beauties 
of  detail,  is  graceful  and  noble  throughout,  and 
rises  to  a  close  in  which  lofty  thought  and  passion- 
ate feeling  blend,  typifying  the  union  of  man  and 
woman,  in  one  full,  rich  stream  of  poetry,- — 

The  two-celled  heart  beating  with  one  full  stroke 
Life. 


TENNYSOirS  FOEMS.  93 

We  have  not  spoken  of  Mr.  Tennyson  as  a  song 
writer ;  yet,  had  he  written  nothing  but  half-a-dozen 
of  his  best  songs,  his  place  among  English  poets 
would  have  been  incontestably  high.  Flow  down 
cold  Rivulet  to  the  Sea — Break^  hreak — The  Bugle 
Song — Tears  J  idle  Tears — Come  down,  0  Maid,  from 
yonder  Mountain  Height, — and  the  lyric  that  sparkles 
through  The  Brook,  would  by  themselves  found  a 
reputation  as  lasting  as  the  English  language.  One 
might  almost  as  well  attempt  to  define  the  simple 
sensations  or  to  explain  why  a  melody  in  music 
charms  the  ear,  as  to  convey  in  words  the  impres- 
sion any  of  these  songs  makes  upon  the  reader. 
One  may  analyse  them,  and  put  down  the  separate 
feelings  and  images  of  which  they  consist;  but  the 
effort  to  reflect  upon  them  substitutes  thoughts  for 
sentiments,  as  some  of  the  most  delicate  perfumes 
of  flowers  refuse  to  yield  themselves  to  an  effort, 
and  only  affect  us  as  we  catch  their  evanescent 
fragrance  in  fitful  wafts.  Take,  for  instance.  Tears, 
idle  Tears,  to  which  the  title  of  Regret  might  be 
affixed.  No  doubt  its  charm  partly  depends  on  the 
pathetic  character  of  the  separate  images  collected 
from  human  life  by  the  dominant  feeling,  and  on 
the  skill  with  which  these  rise  gradually  to  a  climax. 
The   sad  pleasure  excited  by  the  waning  fields  in 


94  as  SATS. 

autumn — one  of  the  lightest  and  most  evanescent 
of  regrets, — deepens  into  the  feelings  with  which 
the  return  and  the  departure  of  friends  whose  dwell- 
ing is  beyond  the  ocean  is  regarded.  It  passes,  by 
a  most  natural  and  touching  gradation,  to  that  last 
parting  from  all  that  is  dear  upon  earth,  when  the 
sweetness  of  the  least  objects  that  have  blended 
with  happy  lives  is  solemnized  and  saddened  by 
the  thought  that  it  is  felt  for  the  last  time  by  the 
departing  spirit;  and  that  solemn  sweetness  passes 
again  to  a  climax  in  the  passion  of  tenderness  and 
regret  which  makes  the  memory  of  the  dead  dearer 
than  the  presence  of  the  living, — the  passion  of 
tenderness  and  despair  which  gives  an  agonizing 
rapture  to  the  dreams  of  hopeless  love. 

But  the  power  of  the  song  over  our  feelings  is 
far  greater  than  can  be  attributed  to  any  succession 
of  pathetic  recollections  of  human  life  presented 
distinctly  as  objects  of  thought.  It  awakes  all  the 
fountains  of  bitter-sweet  memory,  sets  us  dreaming 
like  a  half  audible  strain  of  music  in  the  distance, 
without  fixing  the  mind  to  definite  objects,  suspends 
reflection  and  will,  and  brings  up  all  the  delicious 
sweetness  of  the  past  with  the  sadness  that  it  is  past, 
— all  the  brightness  of  our  brightest  moments  witli 
the    cloud    that    so    soon    passes    over    them, — the 


TJENJff^rSON^'S  POEMS.  95 

meetings  and  the  partings,  the  eternal  change  and 
flow,  that  make  up  human  life.  It  is  in  its  infi- 
nite suggestiveness  that  its  charm  lies ;  in  its  power, 
not  to  bring  this  or  that  pathetic  remembrance 
before  the  mind,  but  to  set  the  mind  at  the  tone 
of  delicious  day-di'eaming,  and  to  give  a  half-blissful, 
half-regretful  key-note  to  the  day-dreams.  And  this 
subtle  power  of  suggestiveness  belongs  more  or  less 
to  all  Mr.  Tennyson's  songs ;  they  all  seem  to  touch 
chords  that  lie  deeper  down  than  the  region  of  clear 
intellectual  consciousness ;  they  present  definite  ideas, 
but  they  present  them  with  such  delicacy  of  touch 
as  to  leave  the  mind  only  half  conscious  of  their 
presence, — just  sufiiciently  conscious  to  be  set  off 
dreaming  about  them,  to  feel  their  influence  without 
being  drawn  out  of  itself  to  them,  while  the  melody 
of  the  strain  keeps  up  the  creative  power  of  dream- 
ing at  its  highest  activity. 

Scarcely  one  of  the  more  elaborate  poems  of  which 
we  have  spoken,  though  its  main  object  is  to  present 
the  passion  of  love  in  its  influence  upon  various 
characters  under  various  circumstances,  fails  to  supply 
abundant  evidence  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  interest  in 
other  phases  of  life  than  those  coloured  by  high 
emotion,  and  of  his  power  to  present  them  with  new 
force  and  meaning.     A  fine  sense  of  natural  beauty 


96  ESSAYS. 

and  a  marvellous  faculty  of  word-painting  adorn  his 
love-poems  with  landscape  pictures  which  need  fear 
comparison  with  those  of  no  English  poet.  Locksley 
Hall  is  a  grand  hymn  of  human  progress,  in  which 
the  discoveries  of  science,  the  inventions  of  art,  the 
order  and  movement  of  society,  the  sublime  hopes 
and  beliefs  of  religion,  blend  in  a  magnificent  vision 
of  the  age,  and  are  sung  with  the  rapture  of  a 
prophet  to  the  noblest  music.  In  Maud  the  com- 
monest newspaper  details  of  the  meanness,,  the  cheat- 
ing, the  cruelty,  the  crime  and  misery,  so  rife  among 
us,  supply  food  to  the  sceva  indignatio  of  the  man 
whose  temperament  and  circumstances  make  him 
look  on  the  darker  aspects  of  the  time ;  and  the  same 
man  finds  in  the  latest  topic  of  the  day — which  is 
also  one  of  the  grandest  spectacles  of  our  age — the 
comfort  and  the  hope  that  restore  him  to  sanity  and 
peace  with  himself  and  the  world.  In  The  Princess^ 
history,  science,  and  metaphysics  are  touched  with 
a  light  of  penetrating  intellect  as  well  as  a  grace  of 
poetry;  the  amusements  of  a  Mechanics'  Institute 
and  the  genial  pleasantry  of  a  gay  picnic  party 
contrast  with  the  profoundest  reflections  on  the 
Continental  Revolutions  of  '  48  and  the  most  hopeful 
interpretations  of  the  last  new  socialist  theories.  It 
is  this  wide  range  of  thought,  ever  active  in  every 


TEKIfYSOI^S  POEMS.  97 

direction  to  supply  material  for  the  imaginative 
faculty  of  the  artist, — this  catholic  sympathy  with 
modern  life  in  all  its  characteristic  phases,  that  is 
Mr.  Tennyson's  distinguishing  quality,  and  that,  in 
combination  with  his  formal  poetic  skill,  renders  him 
the  favourite  poet  of  the  cultivated  classes.  And 
it  is  in  the  development  of  this  wide  range  of 
thought  and  sympathy  in  his  poems  published  since 
1833  that  the  growth  and  maturity  of  his  genius 
mainly  manifests  itself.  It  is  because  he  has  grown 
and  ripened  as  a  man  that  his  art  has  seemed  to 
become  more  perfect  with  every  production. 

Although,  however,  these  qualities  are  abundantly 
evidenced  by  the  poems  hitherto  treated,  it  would 
leave  this  survey  incomplete  were  we  not  to  allude 
to  the  poems  which  are  devoted  expressly  to  the 
delineation  of  other  phases  of  modern  life  than  those 
mainly  dependent  on  the  passion  of  sexual  love.  If 
there  were  no  other  motive,  the  necessity  of  indi- 
cating Mr.  Tennyson's  power  of  writing  in  a  homelier, 
a  less  ornate  and  elaborate  style  than  he  generally 
adopts  as  the  proper  dramatic  expression  of  the 
characters  and  moods  of  passion  he  is  presenting, 
would  be  motive  enough.  But  in  fact  The  Brook^ 
Edwin  Morris,  and  The  Golden  Year,  are  among  his 
most  pleasing  productions.      The  Day  Dream,  really 

H 


98  USSAYS. 

a  love-poem  within  a  love-poem,  exquisitely  blends 
sport  with  earnest,  and  might  be  taken  in  its  growth 
from   The  Sleeping  Beauty  to  its  present  elaborate 
form  as  a  type  of  the  development  of  Mr.  Tennyson's 
genius  from  sensuous  beauty  and  rhythmical  music 
to   the   deep   heart  and  wise   intellect   of  his  later 
poems.     Audley  Court  contains  a  charming  song  and 
a  delicious   moonlight  landscape,   besides   a    trans- 
cendant  description  of  a  game-pie.     Walking  to  the 
Mail  is  a  shrewd  conversation  on  the  causes   that 
develope  character  and  deteimine  political  opinion ; 
not  in  our  opinion  particularly  worthy  of  blank  verse 
or  its  place  in  the  collection.      Then  there  are  the 
expressly  political  lyrics,  one  of  which,  at  least.  Love 
thou  thy  Land^  is  only  to  be  compared  with  an  essay 
of   Lord   Bacon's    for   its    compressed    energy   and 
imaginative  reality  of  phrase,   for  its   fulness    and 
wisdom  of  sentiment;  and  far  above  any  essay  of 
Lord  Bacon's  for  its  ardent  patriotism,  its  noble  sense 
of  right  and  truth,  its  grand  faith  in  human  destiny, 
its  prudence,  and  its  courage.      An  obscure  stanza 
or   two   scarcely  make  themselves   felt   in   the   re- 
collection of  its  general  effect. 

But  we  must  speak  briefly  of  In  Memoriam. 
What  survey  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  poetry  could  be 
satisfactory  without  it?     Certainly  not  ours,  who  do 


TENNYSOJfPS  POEMS.  99 

not  believe  all  feelings  to  be  morbid  and  unhealthy 
which  are  not  jojous  or  comfortable,  and  who  do 
believe  that  sorrow,  and  doubt,  and  meditation  have 
their  appointed  beneficent  influence  upon  human 
character,  and  are  no  less  part  of  human  training  for 
a  nobler  and  more  blessed  existence  than  mirth,  and 
demonstrative  certainty,  and  vigorous  action.  We 
should  be  guilty  of  treason  against  our  deepest 
convictions  were  we  to  pass  without  a  protest  the 
notion  that  In  Memoriam  is  a  morbid  mistake, — the 
unhealthy  product  of  a  man  of  genius  in  an  un- 
healthy mood,  degrading  his  genius  by  employing  it 
in  the  delineation  of  a  sorrow  that  is  unmanly  and 
exaggerated, — a  spasmodic  utterance  of  a  weak  mind, 
that  can  only  affect  other  weak  minds  with  hysterical 
emotion,  and  incapacitate  all  who  subject  themselves 
to  its  influence  for  their  duties  to  their  fellow  men 
and  their  reliance  upon  the  goodness  of  God.  Even 
if  we  regarded  In  Memoriam  as  simply  the  record 
of  a  personal  sorrow,  a  poetical  monument  to  a 
personal  friend,  we  should  be  cautious  of  calling  it 
exaggerated,  till  we  were  quite  certain  that  tliere  was 
anything  unworthy  and  unmanly  in  binding  up  our 
hearts  with  the  life  of  another,  and  in  feeling  them 
quiver  with  agony  when  that  other  life  was  torn  jfrom 
us.  It  is  easy  to  understand,  when  social  intercourse 
h2 


100  ESSAYS. 

goes  no  deeper  than  liking  and  disliking,  being 
amused  and  bored;  when  personal  relations  have 
dwindled  down  to  club  intimacies,  and  a  friend  is 
the  man  with  whom  we  dine  and  play  whist;  that 
such  a  tender  and  rooted  affection  as  is  recorded 
through  In  Memoriam  should  appear  exaggerated. 
The  question  is  whether  the  Pall-Mall  standard  of 
human  nature  be  the  highest,  whether  a  profound 
personal  affection  be  really  a  weakness,  or  whether 
on  the  Pall-Mall  theory  the  world  would  not  rapidly 
become  a  pigstye  or  a  slaughterhouse.  Compare 
the  tone  in  which  Shakspeare  addresses  the  male 
friend  to  whom  the  greater  number  of  the  sonnets 
apply,  with  Tennyson's  tone  in  speaking  of  Arthur 
Hallam.  If  the  one  is  supposed  to  do  no  discredit 
to  the  soundest-hearted  as  well  as  the  largest-minded 
man  of  modern  Europe,  why  is  the  other  to  be  called 
morbid  and  exaggerated?  The  critics  need  not  take 
so  much  trouble  to  let  the  world  know  that  they  are 
not  Shakspeares  and  Tennysons  in  heart  any  more 
than  in  intellect.  No  one  who  knows  the  class 
would  be  in  danger  of  so  erroneous  a  supposition. 
But  there  are  thousands  of  men  and  women  whose 
affections  are  akin  to  those  of  these  great  poets,  and 
who  are  grateful  for  the  power  of  reading  in  beautiful 
poetry  an  adequate  expression  of  their  own  deepest 


TSNNYS02PS  FOEMS.  101 

feelings.  We  know  that  such  persons  find  in  In 
Memoriam  the  sort  of  consolation  and  strength  they 
find  in  the  Psalms  of  David.  The  suspiria  de 
profundis  of  gTeat  minds  give  articulate  expression 
to,  and  interpret  the  sorrows  of  lesser  minds,  which 
else  would  darken  life  with  '  clouds  of  nameless 
trouble,'  and  perhaps  never  find  a  peaceful  solution. 

But  the  personal  motive  of  In  Memoriam  is  quite 
inadequate  as  the  standing  point  for  criticism  of  the 
poem. 

The  imaginative  -woe 
That  loves  to  handle  spiritual  strife 

is  operative  throughout;  and,  as  Coleridge  says  of 
love, — 

All  thoughts,  all  passions,  aU  delights, 
Whatever  stirs  this  mortal  frame, 

Are  all  but  ministers  of  love, 
And  feed  his  sacred  flame — 

so,  In  Memoriam  traverses  the  widest  circuit  of 
thought  and  feeling  in  search  of  nutriment  to  its 
mood,  and  represents  the  night-side  of  the  soul  as 
rich  in  objects  and  as  various  in  hues,  as  the  side 
illuminated  by  love  and  joy,  but  all  in  sad  greys 
and  browns,  or  shining  with  the  tender  grace  of  the 
moonlight  or  starlight  which  the  brilliance  of  the 
full  day  conceals.      There  is  as  much  variety  and 


102  USSATS. 

beauty  in  this  aspect  of  life,  as  in  the  other ;  and  as 
God  has  created  us  with  large  capacities  for  sorrow, 
and  has  placed  us  in  circumstances  which  give  those 
capacities  ample  employment,  it  is,  perhaps,  quite 
as  sensible  to  enquire  what  possible  meaning  lies  in 
this  arrangement,  as  to  ignore  the  fact  altogether; 
and  quite  as  religious  to  presume  that  it  has  some 
beneficent  meaning,  and  is  not  without  a  gracious 
design  in  training  men  to  virtue  and  blessedness,  as 
to  attempt  to  baffle  the  arrangement  by  drowning  the 
voice  of  nature  in  pleasure  or  in  action.  If  all  life 
but  enjoyment  and  action  is  morbid  and  unhealthy, 
the  world  has  been  strangely  misconstructed.  The 
mere  comfort  and  serenity  of  the  human  race  seem 
not  to  have  been  leading  objects  in  its  design.  Had 
the  Epicureans  been  consulted  at  the  creation,  they 
could,  no  doubt,  have  suggested  several  improve- 
ments. As  a  late  eminent  judge  remarked,  they 
would  have  had  it  rain  only  during  the  night;  and, 
with  Porson,  when  Parr,  'the  schoolmaster  run  to 
seed, '  pompously  asked  him,  '  Mr.  Professor,  what 
do  you  think  of  the  existence  of  physical  and  moral 
evil?'  they  would  reply,  'Why,  Doctor,  I  think. we 
could  have  done  very  well  without  either. '  Un- 
fortunately, neither  Epicurean,  nor  stoic,  nor  egotist 
of  any  school  or  sect,  was  taken  into  counsel  when 


T£2rNYS02r'S  F0EM8.  103 

the  foundations  of  the  universe  were  laid.  And 
Mr.  Tennyson,  finding  himself  in  a  world  where 
sorrow  alternates  with  joy,  and  in  a  nation  whose 
humour,  even,  has  been  supposed  to  have  a  serious 
and  Saturnine  cast, — having  heard,  too,  we  may 
presume,  of  a  text  in  a  certain  book  which  says, 
*  Blessed  are  they  that  mourn,  for  they  shall  be 
comforted,' — and  having  himself  lost  a  friend  who  was 
as  the  light  of  his  eyes  and  the  joy  of  his  heart,  has 
not  thought  it  an  unworthy  employment  of  his  poetic 
gifts  to  bestow  them  in  erecting  a  monument  to  his 
friend,  upon  which  he  has  carved  bas-reliefs  of 
exceeding  grace  and  beauty,  and  has  worked  delicate 
flowers  into  the  cornices,  and  adorned  the  capitals 
of  the  columns  with  emblematic  devices;  and  upon 
the  summit  he  has  set  the  statue  of  his  friend,  and 
about  the  base  run  the  sweetest  words  of  love  with 
the  mournfullest  accents  of  grief — the  darkest  doubts 
with  the  sublimest  hopes.  The  groans  of  despair 
are  there,  with  the  triumphant  songs  of  faith,  and 
over  all,  in  letters  of  gold,  surmounting  the  mingled 
posies  which  tell  of  all  the  moods  of  the  human  mind 
through  its  years  of  mourning,  is  the  scroll  on  which 
one  reads  from  afar,  '  /  am  the  resurrection  and  the 
life?     ^  Blessed  are  the  dead  that  die  in  the  Lord.^ 

Camh'idge  Essays,  1855. 


104  ASSAYS. 


WOEDSWOKTH'S    POEMS. 


William  Wordsworth  is  generally  allowed  to 
have  exercised  a  deeper  and  more  permanent  in- 
fluence upon  the  literature  and  modes  of  thinking 
of  our  age,  than  any  of  the  great  poets  who  lived 
and  wrote  during  the  first  quarter  of  the  present 
century.  In  proportion  as  his  fame  was  of  slower 
growth,  and  his  poems  were  longer  in  making  their 
way  to  the  understanding  and  affections  of  his 
countrymen,  so  their  roots  seem  to  have  struck  deeper 
down,  and  the  crown  of  glory  that  encircles  his 
memory  is  of  gold,  that  has  heen  purified  and 
brightened  by  the  fiery  ordeal  through  which  it  has 
passed.  Tennyson  says  of  the  laureate  wreath  which 
he  so  deservedly  wears,  that  it  is 

Greener  from  the  brow3 
Of  him  -who  uttered  nothing  base. 

And  this,  which  seems  at  first  sight  negative  praise, 
is,  in  reality,  a  proof  of  exquisite  discernment;   for 


WORBSWORTR' S  POEMS.  105 

it  is  just  that  which  constitutes  the  marked  distinction 
between  Wordsworth  and  the  other  reallj  original 
poets  who  are  likely  to  share  with  him  the  honour 
of  representing  poetically  to  posterity  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  their  crowns  there 
is  alloy,  both  moral  and  intellectual.  His  may  not 
be  of  so  imperial  a  fashion;  the  gems  that  stud  it 
may  be  less  dazzling,  but  the  gold  is  of  ethereal 
temper,  and  there  is  no  taint  upon  his  robe.  Weak- 
ness, incompleteness,  imperfection,  he  had,  for  he  was 
a  mortal  man  of  limited  faculties,  but  spotless  purity 
is  not  to  be  denied  him — he  uttered  nothing  base. 
Our  readers  will  anticipate  us  in  ranking  with  him, 
as  the  representative  poets  of  their  age,  Byron,  Scott, 
and  Shelley.  Of  each  of  these  we  would  say  a  few 
words,  especially  in  this  representative  character. 

Lord  Byron's  poems  are  the  actual  life-experience 
of  a  man  whose  birth  and  fortune  enabled  him  to 
mix  with  the  highest  society,  and  whose  character 
led  him  to  select  for  his  choice  that  portion  of  it 
which  pursued  pleasure  as  the  main,  if  not  the  sole 
object  of  existence.  Under  a  thin  disguise  of  name, 
country,  and  outward  incident,  they  present  us  with 
the  desires  which  actuated,  the  passions  which 
agitated,  and  the  characters  which  were  the  ideals 
of  the  fashionable  men  and  women   of  the  earlier 


106  ASSAYS. 

part  of  this  century.  Limited  and  monotonous  as 
they  are  in  their  essential  nature,  ringing  perpetual 
changes  upon  one  passion  and  one  phase  of  passion, 
the  brilliance  of  their  diction,  the  voluptuous  melody 
of  their  verse,  the  picturesque  beauty  of  their  scenery, 
well  enough  represent  that  life  of  the  richer  classes, 
which  chases  with  outstretched  arms  aU  the  Protean 
forms  of  pleasure,  only  to  find  the  subtle  essence 
escape  as  soon  as  grasped,  leaving  beliind  in  its  place 
weariness,  disappointment,  and  joyless  stagnation. 
The  loftiest  joys  they  paint  are  the  thriUings  of 
the  sense,  the  raptures  of  a  fine  nervous  organiza- 
tion; their  pathos  is  the  regret,  and  their  wisdom 
the  languor  and  the  satiety  of  the  jaded  voluptuary. 
These  form  the  staple,  the  woof  of  Lord  Byron's 
poetry,  and  with  it  is  enwoven  all  that  which  gives 
outward  variety  and  incessant  stimulating  novelty 
to  the  pursuits  of  an  Englishman  of  fashion.  These 
pursuits  are  as  numerous,  as  absorbing,  and  demand 
as  much  activity  of  a  kind  as  those  of  the  student 
or  the  man  of  business.  Among  them  will  be 
found  those  upon  which  the  student  and  the  man 
of  business  are  employed,  though  in  a  different 
spirit,  and  with  a  difierent  aim.  Thus  we  frequently 
see  among  the  votaries  of  pleasure  men  who  are 
fond  of  literature,  of  art,  of  politics,  of  foreign  travel, 


WOEBSWOBTE' S  FOEMS.  107 

of  all  manly  and  active  enterprise ;  but  all  these 
■will  be  pursued,  not  as  duties  to  be  done,  in  an 
earnest,  hopeful,  self-sacrificing  spirit,  'that  scorns 
delights  and  lives  laborious  days,'  but  for  amusement, 
for  immediate  pleasure  to  be  reaped,  as  a  resource 
against  ennui  and  vacuity,  to  which  none  but  the 
weakest  and  most  effeminate  nature  will  succumb. 

This  difference  of  object  and  of  motive  necessitates — ^ 

a  difference  in  the  value  of  the  results.  The  soil, 
which  is  ploughed  superficially,  and  for  a  quick 
return,  will  bear  but  frail  and  fading  flowers;  the 
planter  of  oaks  must  toil  in  faith  and  patience 
and  sublime  confidence  in  the  future.  And  so,  into 
whatever  field  the  wide  and  restless  energies  of 
men  like  Lord  Byron  carry  them,  they  bring  home 
no  treasures  that  will  endure — no  marble  of  which 
world-lasting  statue  or  palace  may  be  hewn  or  built 
— no  iron,  of  which  world-subduing  machines  may 
be  wrought.  Poems,  pictures,  history,  science,  the 
magnificence  and  loveliness  of  Nature,  cities  of  old 
renown,  adventures  of  desperate  excitement,  new 
manners,  languages,  and  characters,  supply  them 
with  an  ever  fresh  flow  of  sensation  and  emotion, 
keep  the  senses  and  the  faculties  cognate  with  sense 
in  a  pleasant  activity,  but  no  well-based  general- 
ization is   gained  for  the  understanding;   facts   are 


108  USSAYS. 

not  even  carefully  observed  and  honestly  studied; 
pleasant  sensation  was  the  object,  and  that  once 
obtained,  there  is  no  more  worth  in  that  which 
produced  it,  though  in  it  may  lie  a  law  of  God's 
manifestation,  one  of  those  spiritual  facts  to  know 
and  obey  which  would  seem  the  chief  purpose  of 
man's  existence,  to  discover  and  make  them  known, 
the  noblest  glory  and  highest  function  of  genius. 
It  is  in  this  spirit  that  Lord  Byron  has  questioned 
Life  :  '  Oh  !  where  can  pleasure  be  found  ?'  and  Life, 
echo-like,  would  only  answer, '  Where !'  It  is  because 
he  put  that  question  more  earnestly,  lived  up  to  its 
spirit  more  fearlessly,  and  more  faithfully  and  experi- 
mentally reported  the  answer,  that  he  is  so  eminently 
a  representative  poet — a  representative  of  what  a 
large  and  important  class  in  every  country  actually 
is,  of  what  a  far  larger  class  aspires  to  be.  It  is  in 
his  fearless  attempt  at  solving  the  problem  of  life  in 
his  own  way,  his  complete  discomfiture,  and  his  un- 
shrinking exhibition  of  that  discomfiture,  that  the 
absolute  and  permanent  value  of  his  social  teaching 
consists.  For  he  was  endowed  with  such  gifts  of 
nature  and  of  fortune,  so  highly  placed,  so  made  to 
attract  and  fascinate,  adorned  with  such  beauty  and 
grace,  with  such  splendour  of  talents,  with  such 
quick  susceptibility  to  impressions,  with  such  healthy 


WOEDSTFOBTE'S  POEMS.  109 

activity  of  mind,  with  such  rich  flow  of  speech, 
with  such  vast  capacity  of  enjoyment,  that  no  one 
is  likely  to  make  the  experiment  he  made  from 
a  higher  vantage  ground,  with  more  chances  of 
success.  And  the  result  of  his  experience  he  has 
given  to  the  world,  and  has  thrown  over  the  whole 
the  charm  of  a  clear,  vigorous,  animated  style, 
at  once  masculine,  and  easy,  and  polished,  spark- 
ling with  beauty,  instinct  with  life,  movement, 
and  variety ;  by  turns  calm,  voluptuous,  impassioned, 
enthusiastic,  terse,  and  witty,  and  always  most  promi- 
nent that  unstudied  grace,  that  Rubens-like  facility 
of  touch,  which  irresistibly  impresses  the  reader  with 
a  sense  of  power,  of  strength  not  put  fully  forth,  of 
resources  carelessly  flowing  out  with  exhaustless 
prodigality,  not  husbanded  with  timid  anxiety  and 
exhibited  with  pompous  ostentation.  It  is  the 
combination  of  these  qualities  of  the  artist,  with  his 
peculiar  fearlessness  and  honesty  of  avowal — his  plain, 
unvarnished  expression  of  what  he  found  pleasant, 
and  chose  for  his  good,  that  will  ever  give  him  a 
high,  if  not  almost  the  highest  place  among  the  poets 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  even  with  those  readers 
who  perceive  and  lament  the  worthlessness  of  his 
matter,  the  superficiality  and  scantiness  of  his  know- 
ledge, the  want  of  purity  and  elevation  in  his  life  and 


110  ESSAYS. 

character.  Those  will  best  appreciate  his  wonderful 
talents  who  are  acquainted  with  the  works  of  liis 
countless  imitators,  who  have  admirably  succeeded  in 
re-producing  his  bad  morality,  his  superficial  thoughts, 
and  his  characterless  portraits,  without  the  fervour  of 
his  feeling,  the  keenness  of  his  sensations,  the  ease 
and  vigour  of  his  language,  the  flash  of  his  wit,  or 
the  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  the  manly  common- 
sense  which  redeemed  and  gave  value  to  what  else 
had  been  entirely  worthless. 

If  the  name  of  Lord  Byron  naturally  links  itself 
with  the  fashionable  life  of  great  cities ;  with  circles 
where  men  and  women  live  mutually  to  attract  and 
please  each  other;  where  the  passions  are  cherished 
as  stimulants  and  resources  against  ennui,  are  fostered 
by  luxurious  idleness,  and  heightened  by  all  the  aids 
that  an  old  and  elaborate  material  civilization  can 
add  to  the  charms  of  beauty,  and  the  excitements 
of  brilliant  assemblies ;  where  art  and  literature  are 
degraded  into  handmaids  and  bondslaves  of  sensu- 
ality; where  the  vanity  of  social  distinction  fires  the 
tongue  of  the  eloquent  speaker,  wakens  the  harp 
of  the  poet,  colours  the  canvass  of  the  painter,  moulds 
the  manners  and  sways  the  actions,  directs  even  the 
loves  and  the  hatreds  of  all;  no  less  naturally  does 
the  name  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  stand  as  the  symbol 


WORBSWORTE'S  POEMS.  Ill 

and  representative  of  the  life  and  tastes  of  the  country 
aristocracy,  who  bear  the  titles  and  hold  the  lands 
of  the  feudal  barons,  and  of  the  country  gentlemen 
whose  habits  and  manners  are  in  such  perfect  contrast 
to  those  of  the  Squire  Westerns  to  whose  places  they 
have  succeeded.  Possessing  in  a  high  degree  the 
active  and  athletic  frame,  the  robust  health,  the  hardy 
training,  the  vigorous  nerve,  the  bold  spirit,  the  frank 
bearing,  and  the  genial  kindness  of  the  gentlemen  of 
the  olden  time,  he  could  heartily  appreciate  and  un- 
hesitatingly approve  all  that  time  and  revolution  had 
spared  of  feudal  dominion  and  territorial  grandeur. 
The  ancient  loyalty,  so  happily  tempering  the  firmness 
of  a  principle  with  the  fervour  of  a  feeling,  never  beat 
higher  in  the  heart  of  a  cavalier  of  the  seventeenth 
than  in  that  of  the  Scottish  Advocate  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Every  one  will  remember  that  he 
refused  to  write  a  life  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  because 
in  reference  to  her  conduct,  his  feelings  were  at 
variance  with  his  judgment.  And  in  painting  those 
old  times  in  which  his  imagination  delighted  to  revel, 
all  that  would  most  have  revolted  our  modem 
mildness  of  manners,  and  shocked  our  modem  sense 
of  justice,  was  softened  down  or  dropped  out  of  sight, 
and  the  nobler  features  of  those  ages,  their  courage, 
their  devotion,  their  strength  and  clearness  of  purpose, 


112  us  SATS. 

their  marked  individuality  of  character,  their  im- 
pulses of  heroism  and  delicacy,  their  manly  enterprise, 
their  picturesque  costumes  and  manners  of  life,  "were 
all  brought  into  bold  relief,  and  placed  before  the 
reader  with  such  fulness  of  detail,  in  such  grandeur 
of  outline,  in  such  bright  and  vivid  colouring,  as 
gave  even  to  the  unimaginative  a  more  distinct 
conception  of,  and  a  more  lively  sympathy  with, 
the  past  than  they  could  gain  for  themselves  of 
the  present,  as  it  was  whirling  and  roaring  round 
them,  confusing  them  with  its  shifting  of  hues  and 
forms,  and  stunning  them  with  its  hurricane  of  noises. 
And  apart  from  the  fascination  which  History,  so 
presented,  must  have  for  the  descendants  of  men 
and  classes  of  historical  renown,  for  the  hereditary 
rulers  and  the  privileged  families  of  a  great  country, 
and  though  probably  the  creator  of  the  splendid 
pageantry  was  definitely  conscious  of  no  such  purpose, 
yet  there  must  have  mingled  with  this  fascination, 
and  have  infused  into  it  a  deeper  and  more  personal 
feeling,  the  regretful  sense  that  the  state  of  society 
80  glowingly  depicted  had  passed  away, — a  fore- 
boding that  even  its  last  vestiges  were  fast  dis- 
appearing before  the  wave  of  democratic  equality, 
and  the  uprising  of  a  new  aristocracy  of  wealth 
and  intellect.     If  at  the   time  those   famous   verse 


WOMBSWORTE' S  POEMS.  113 

and  prose  romances  came  upon  the  world  in  a  mar- 
vellously rapid  succession,  all  that  the  public  were 
conscious  of  was  a  blind  pleasure  and  unreflecting 
delight,  it  is  no  less  true  that  in  an  age  of  re- 
volution they  raised  up  before  it  in  a  transformed 
and  glorified  life  the  characters,  the  institutions, 
the  sentiments  and  manners  of  an  age  of  absolute 
government  by  the  strong  arm  or  by  divine  right 
— of  an  age  of  implicit  belief,  inspiring  heroic 
action,  sanctioning  romantic  tenderness,  harmonizing 
and  actuating  all  the  virtues  that  adorn  and  elevate 
fallen  humanity;  and  that  since  then  there  has 
arisen  in  our  country  a  thoughtful  reverence  and 
love  for  the  past — a  sense  of  the  livingness  and 
value  of  our  history — a  desire  and  a  determination 
to  appreciate  and  comprehend,  and  so  not  forfeit, 
the  inheritance  of  wisdom,  forethought,  brave  action, 
and  noble  self-denial,  which  our  ancestors  have  be- 
queathed to  us.  How  many  false  and  puerile  forms 
this  feeling  has  taken  it  does  not  fall  within  our 
present  scope  to  notice.  In  spite  of  white-waiscoat 
politics  and  Pugin  pedantries,  the  feeling  is  a  wise 
and  a  noble  one — one  which  is  the  surety  and  the 
safeguard  of  progress ;  and  that  much  of  it  is  owing 
to  the  interest  excited  so  widely  and  so  deeply  by 
Sir   Walter    Scott's    writings,   those  will    be   least 

I 


114  JESS  AYS. 

disposed  to  deny  who  have  thought  most  on  the 
causes  which  mould  a  nation's  character,  and  the 
influences  which  work  out  a  nation's  destiny. 

It  is  in  no  fanciful  or  arbitrary  spirit  of  system 
that,  while  we  assign  to  Byron  the  empire  over 
the  world  of  fashion  and  of  pleasure,  and  seek  the 
mainspring  of  Scott's  popularity  in  the  sway  of 
old  historical  traditions  over  a  landed  aristocracy, 
and  the  longing  regret  with  which  they  look  back 
to  a  state  of  society  passed  or  rapidly  passing  away, 
we  should  regard  Shelley  as  the  poetical  repre- 
sentative of  those  whose  hopes  and  aspirations  and 
aflfections  rush  forward  to  embrace  the  great  Here- 
after, and  dwell  in  rapturous  anticipation  on  the 
coming  of  the  golden  year,  the  reign  of  universal 
freedom,  and  the  establishment  of  universal  bro- 
therhood. By  nature  and  by  circumstance  he  was 
marvellously  fitted  for  his  task, — gentle,  sensitive, 
and  fervid,  he  shrank  from  the  least  touch  of  wrong, 
and  hated  injustice  with  the  zeal  and  passion  of 
a  martyr;  while,  as  if  to  point  him  unmistakeably 
to  his  mission,  and  consecrate  him  by  the  divine 
ordination  of  facts,  he  was  subjected  at  his  first 
entrance  into  life  to  treatment,  both  from  constituted 
authority  and  family  connexion,  so  unnecessarily 
harsh,  so  stupidly  cruel,   as   would  have   di'iven  a 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  115 

worse  man  into  reckless  dissipation,  a  weaker  man 
into  silent  despair.     '  Most  men,'  he  says  himself, 

Are  cradled  into  poetry  by  wrong; 

They  learn  in  suffering  what  they  teach  in  song. 

Whether  this  be  the  best  or  most  usual  training  for 
the  poet  may  well  be  doubted,  but  it  is  quite  indu- 
bitable that  such  discipline  will  soonest  open  a  man's 
eyes  to  the  evils  of  existing  institutions,  and  the  vices 
of  old  societies ;  and  will  lend  to  his  invectives  that 
passion  which  raises  them  above  satire — to  his 
schemes,  that  enthusiasm  which  redeems  them  from 
being  crotchets;  will  turn  his  abstract  abhorrence  of 
oppression  into  hatred  against  the  oppressors — his 
loathing  of  corruption  into  a  withering  scorn  and 
contempt  for  tyrants  and  their  tools,  the  knaves  and 
hypocrites  who  use  holy  names  and  noble  offices  to 
promote  their  selfish  ends,  and  to  fetter  and  enslave 
their  brother  men.  And  so  it  happened  with  Shelley. 
The  feelings  of  poignant  anguish  and  bitter  indig- 
nation, which  had  been  roused  in  him  by  cruelty  and 
injustice  towards  himself,  coloured  all  his  views  of 
society,  and  at  once  sharpened  his  hostility  to  the 
civil  and  religious  institutions  of  his  country,  and 
lent  more  glowing  colours  to  the  rainbow  of  promise 
that  beamed  upon  him  from  the  distance,  through 
the  storm  of  bloodshed  and  revolution.  Add  to  this, 
I2 


116  ESS  ATS. 

that  his  mind  was  ill-trained,  and  not  well  furnished 
with  facts ;  that  he  could  draw  from  form,  colour,  and 
sound,  a  voluptuous  enjoyment,  keener  and  more  in- 
tense than  the  grosser  animal  sensations  of  ordinary 
men;  that  his  intellect  hungered  and  thirsted  after 
absolute  truth,  after  central  being,  after  a  living 
personal  unity  of  all  things.  Thus  he  united  in 
himself  many  of  the  mightiest  tendencies  of  our  time 
— its  democratic,  its  sceptical,  its  pantheistic,  its 
socialistic  spirit ;  and  thus  he  has  become  the  darling 
and  the  watchword  of  those  who  aim  at  reconstructing 
society,  in  its  forms,  in  its  principles,  and  in  its 
beliefs, — who  regard  the  past  as  an  unmitigated 
fciilure,  as  an  entire  mistake, — who  would  welcome 
the  deluge  for  the  sake  of  the  new  world  that  would 
rise  after  the  subsidence  of  the  waters.  Nor  has  their 
affectionate  admiration  been  ill  bestowed.  With  one 
exception,  a  more  glorious  poet  has  not  been  given 
to  the  English  nation ;  and  if  we  make  one  exception, 
it  is  because  Shakespeare  was  a  man  of  profounder 
insight,  of  calmer  temperament,  of  wider  experience, 
of  more  extensive  knowledge ;  a  greater  philosopher, 
in  fact,  and  a  wiser  man ;  not  because  he  possessed 
more  vital  heat,  more  fusing,  shaping  power  of  im- 
agination, or  a  more  genuine  poetic  impulse  and 
inspiration.      After   the  passions   and  the   theories. 


WORLSWORTE'S  POEMS.  117 

whicli  supplied  Sliellej  with  the  subject-matter  of  his 
poems  have  died  away  and  become  mere  matters  of 
history,  there  will  still  remain  a  song,  such  as  mortal 
man  never  sung  before,  of  inarticulate  rapture  and  of 
freezing  pain, — of  a  blinding  light  of  truth  and  a 
dazzling  weight  of  glory,  translated  into  English 
speech,  as  coloured  as  a  painted  window,  as  suggestive, 
as  penetrating,  as  intense  as  music. 

We  have  assigned  to  three  great  poets  of  our  age 
the  function  of  representing  three  classes,  distinct  in 
character,  position,  and  taste.  But  as  these  classes 
intermingle  and  become  confused  in  life,  so  that 
individuals  may  partake  of  the  elements  of  all  three, 
and,  in  fact,  no  one  individual  can  be  exactly  defined 
by  his  class  type,  so  the  poets  that  represent  them 
have,  of  course,  an  influence  and  a  popularity  that 
extend  far  beyond  the  classes  to  whose  peculiar 
characteristics  and  predominant  tastes  we  have  as- 
sumed them  to  have  given  form  and  expression.  Men 
read  for  amusement,  to  enlarge  the  range  of  their 
ideas  and  sympathies,  to  stimulate  the  emotions  that 
are  sluggish  or  wearied  out ;  and  thus  the  poet  is  not 
only  the  interpreter  of  men  and  of  classes  to  them- 
selves, but  represents  to  men  characters,  modes  of  life, 
and  social  phenomena  with  which  they  are  before 
unacquainted,  excites  interest,  and  arouses  sympathy, 


118  us  SATS. 

and  becomes  the  reconciler,  hj  causing  misunder- 
standings to  vanish,  as  each  man  and  each  class 
comprehends  more  fully  the  common  humanity  that 
lies  under  the  special  manifestation,  the  same  ele- 
mental passions  and  affections,  the  same  wants,  the 
same  desires,  the  same  hopes,  the  same  beliefs,  the 
same  duties.  It  is  thus  especially  that  poets  are 
teachers,  that  they  aid  in  strengthening  and  civilizing 
nations,  in  drawing  closer  the  bonds  of  brotherhood. 

He  of  whom  it  is  our  especial  piirpose  in  this 
article  to  speak,  has  said  of  himself,  '  The  poet 
is  a  teacher.  I  wish  to  be  considered  as  a  teacher, 
or  as  nothing.'  If  we  are  asked  wherein  lay  the 
value  of  his  teaching,  we  reply,  that  it  lay  mainly 
in  the  power  that  was  given  him  of  unfolding  the 
glory  and  the  beauty  of  the  material  world,  and 
in  bringing  consciously  before  the  minds  of  men 
the  high  moral  function  that  belonged  in  the  human 
economy  to  the  imagination,  and  in  thereby  redeem- 
ing the  faculties  of  sense  from  the  comparatively 
low  and  servile  office  of  ministering  merely  to  the 
animal  pleasures,  or  what  Mr.  Carlyle  has  called 
'the  beaver  inventions,'  That  beside,  and  in  con- 
nexion with  this,  he  has  shown  the  possibility  of 
combining  a  state  of  vivid  enjoyment,  even  of  intense 
passion,  with  the  activity  of  thought,  and  the  repose 


WORBSWOMTE' S  POEMS.  119 

of  contemplation.  He  has,  moreover,  done  more 
than  any  poet  of  his  age  to  break  down  and  ob- 
literate the  conventional  barriers  that,  in  our  dis- 
ordered social  state,  divide  rich  and  poor  into  two 
hostile  nations ;  and  he  has  done  this,  not  by  bitter 
and  passionate  declamations  on  the  injustice  and 
vices  of  the  rich,  and  on  the  wrongs  and  virtues 
of  the  poor,  but  by  fixing  his  imagination  on  the 
elemental  feelings,  which  are  the  same  in  all  classes, 
and  drawing  out  the  beauty  that  lies  in  all  that 
is  truly  natural  in  human  life.  Dirt,  squalor, 
disease,  vice,  and  hard-heartedness,  are  not  natural 
to  any  grade  of  life;  where  they  are  found,  they 
are  man's  work,  not  God's;  and  the  poet's  business 
is  not  with  the  misery  of  man's  making,  but  with 
the  escape  from  that  misery  revealed  to  those  that 
have  eyes  to  see,  and  ears  to  hear, — we  mean, 
that  no  true  poet  will  be  merely  a  painter  of  that 
which  is  low,  deformed,  essentially  inhuman,  as  his 
ultimate  and  highest  aim,  though,  as  means,  he  may 
as  the  greatest  poets  have  done,  use  them  to  move 
and  rouse  the  sleeping  soul.  This,  we  say,  in 
answer  to  those  that  asserted  that  Wordsworth  was 
not  a  true  painter  of  manners  and  characters  from 
humble  life:  we  say  he  was,  for  that  he  painted, 
as   minutely   as   served    his    aim,    that   which  was 


120  :essats. 

essential  to  its  occupations  and  its  general  outward 
condition — that  which  it  must  be,  if  Christian  men 
are  to  look  upon  the  inequalities  of  wealth  and 
station  as  a  permanent  element  in  society.  And 
all  this  which  he  taught  in  his  writings,  he  taught 
equally  by  his  life.  And  furthermore,  he  mani- 
fested a  deep  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  the  gift  of 
genius,  and  refused  to  barter  its  free  exercise  for 
aught  that  the  world  could  hold  out  to  him,  either 
to  terrify  or  to  seduce ;  and  he  lived  to  prove,  not 
only  that  the  free  exercise  of  poetic  genius  is  its 
own  exceeding  great  reward,  bringing  a  rich  harvest 
of  joy  and  peace,  and  the  sweet  consciousness  of 
duty  well  discharged,  and  God's  work  done;  but, 
what  was  quite  as  much  needed  in  our  time,  he 
showed  that  for  the  support  and  nourishment  of 
poetic  inspiration,  no  stimulants  of  social  vanity, 
vicious  sensuality,  or  extravagant  excitement,  were 
requisite,  and  that  it  could  flourish  in  the  highest 
vigour  on  the  simple  influence  of  external  nature, 
and  the  active  exercise  of  the  family  affections. 

William  Wordsworth  was  bom  at  Cockermouth, 
in  Cumberland,  on  April  7th,  1770,  the  second  son 
of  John  Wordsworth,  attorney  and  law  agent  to  Sir 
James  Lowther,  created  Earl  of  Lonsdale.  His 
mother  was  a  Miss  Cookson,  of  Penrith,  and  both 


WORBSWOETE' S  FOEMS.  121 

parents  belonged  to  families  of  high  antiquity  and 
great  respectability — a  fact  which  may  not  have  been 
without  its  influence  on  the  poet's  feelings  and 
opinions.  Mrs.  Wordsworth  died  when  her  son  was 
nearly  eight  years  old,  but  not  too  early  to  have 
discerned  in  him  qualities  which  made  her  anxious 
about  his  future  life,  and  to  impress  her  with  the 
presentiment  that  he  would  be  remarkable  for  good 
or  evil.  He  himself  attributes  this  feeling  of  hers  to 
his  '  stiflf,  moody,  and  violent  temper.' 

If  however  it  be  true  that  the  child  is  father  to 
the  man,  Mrs.  Wordsworth  had  probably  better 
reason  for  anticipating  a  remarkable  career  for  her 
son  than  was  given  by  any  excess  of  mere  boyish 
obstinacy  and  self-will.  In  the  fifth  book  of  the 
Prelude  he  describes  her  mode  of  education  as  based 
upon  a 

Virtual  faith  that  He 
Who  fills  the  mother's  breast  with  innocent  milk, 
Doth  also  for  our  nobler  part  provide, 
Under  His  great  correction  and  control, 
As  innocent  instincts  and  as  innocent  food. 
*  «  «  *  « 

This  was  her  creed,  and  therefore  she  was  piire 

From  anxious  fear  of  error  or  mishap, 

And  evil,  overweeningly  so  called, 

Was  not  pufi'ed  up  by  false  unnat\u-al  hopes. 

Nor  selfish  with  unnecessary  cai-e  ; 

Nor  with  impatience  from  the  season  asked 

More  than  its  timely  produce;  rather  loved 


122  JSSSATS. 

The  hours  for  what  they  are,  than  from  regard 
Glanced  on  their  promises  in  restless  pride. 
Such  was  she — not  from  faculties  more  strong 
Than  others  have,  but  from  the  times,  perhaps, 
And  spot  in  which  she  lived,  and  through  a  grace 
Of  modest  meekness,  simple-mindedness, 
A  heart  that  found  benignity  and  hope. 
Being  itself  benign. 

And  so  the  first  peril  of  childhood  was  escaped, 
and  that  a  peril  of  no  small  moment,  when  the  child 
is  a  genius,  and  the  mother  knows  it,  and  ponders 
it  in  her  heart;  the  peril  of  overstimulation  of 
faculties  already  precociously  developed,  bringing 
with  it,  as  its  sure  result,  prodigious  vanity  and 
premature  exhaustion.  Nor  were  other  influences 
besides  those  of  a  wise  mother's  loving  care  wanting 
to  train  the  future  poet.  The  picturesque  Derwent, 
blending  with  his  nurse's  song,  flowed  murmuring 
along  his  infant  dreams,  and  composed  to  more  than 
infant  softness  his  earliest  thoughts  and  sensations. 
A  few  years  later,  the  same  river  was  his  '  tempting 
playmate.'  He  would,  when  five  years  old,  'make 
one  long  bathing  of  a  summer's  day,'  'bask  in  the 
sun,  and  plunge,  and  bask  again,  alternate.'  Happy 
child!  the  seed-time  of  whose  soul  can  thus  be 
entrusted  to  God  and  Nature.  Wise  mother!  who 
knows  how  to  aid,  without  superseding  natural  in- 
fluences and  instinctive  tendencies — to  let  the  child 


WOSDSWOBTS'S  FOEMS.  123 

grow  at  its  natural  pace,  and  in  its  natural  direction 
— not  to  raise  it  upon  stilts,  or  straiten  it  in  stays. 
How  much  wiser  would  the  manhood  of  many  of  us 
he,  if  our  childhood  had  been  more  joyous  and  less 
trammelled,  less  made  to  hend  to  the  whims,  sys- 
tems, or  caprices  of  the  elderly  pedants  about  us. 
We  of  course  know  that  children  are  not  diminutive 
angels,  and  need  both  instruction  and  correction; 
but  we  believe  every  sensible  mother  in  the  three 
kingdoms  will  go  with  us  in  an  avowal  of  a  decided 
preference  for  troublesome,  ill-behaved  children,  over 
the  good  little  boys  and  girls,  who  know  the  elements 
of  all  the  ologies,  and  can  define  many  of  the  isms — 
who  never  dirty  their  pinafores,  and  decline  eating 
their  dinners  till  grace  has  been  said.  To  return 
to  William  Wordsworth.  Another  influence,  that 
was  to  endure,  and  colour  his  whole  life,  had  already 
begun  to  act  upon  him.  His  sister  Dorothy  was  two 
years  younger  than  himself;  the  part  she  played  in 
the  formation  of  his  character  he  exquisitely  describes 
in  his  poem  to  the  '  Sparrow's  Nest': — 

The  blessing  of  my  later  years 
Was  witli  me  when  a  hoy. 
She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears, 
And  humble  cares,  and  delicate  fears; 
A  heart,  the  fountain  of  sweet  tears; 
And  love,  and  thought,  and  joy. 


124  us  SATS. 

But  one  Llow  carried  off  the  mother  and  sepa- 
rated brother  and  sister — the  latter  went  to  reside 
with  her  maternal  relations :  the  former  was  sent 
to  school  at  Hawkeshead,  near  the  lake  of  Esthwaite. 
He  had  abeady  been  instructed  in  the  rudiments  of 
learning  at  Cockermouth  by  the  E-ev.  Mr.  Gilbanks ; 
and  his  father,  who  is  said  to  have  been  a  person 
of  considerable  mental  vigour  and  eloquence,  had 
contributed  to  his  education,  by  setting  him  very 
early  to  learn  passages  from  the  best  English  poets 
by  heart,  so  that  he  could  repeat  large  portions 
of  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Spenser.  It  was  pro- 
bably no  great  misfortune  for  Wordsworth  that  the 
north  country  schools  did  not  pay  that  attention  to 
classical  composition  which  enables  Eton,  Rugby, 
Shrewsbury,  and  our  other  great  public  schools, 
to  send  up  men  to  the  Universities  who  can 
write  Greek  with  the  purity  of  Xenophon,  and 
Latin  with  the  elegance  of  Cicero.  At  any  rate, 
such  was  the  case;  and  the  only  learning  he  seems 
to  have  acquired  at  Hawkeshead  was  a  fair  know- 
ledge of  Latin,  and  an  acquaintance  with  the  elements 
of  mathematics.  But  he  tells  us  that  his  school 
days  were  very  happy,  chiefly  because  then,  and 
in  the  vacations,  he  was  left  at  liberty  to  read 
whatever  books   he  liked.     He  instances  Fielding, 


WORBSWORTH'S  POEMS.  125 

Cervantes,  Le  Sage,  and  Swift;  and  particularizes 
Gulliver  s  Travels  and  the  Tale  of  a  Tub  as  being 
much  to  his  taste.  The  readers  of  the  Prelude 
need  not  be  told  that  his  real  education  at  school 
lay  neither  in  the  study  of  Latin,  nor  in  the  perusal 
of  the  works  of  the  humorists,  which  exercised 
little  apparent  influence  upon  the  formation  of  his 
tastes,  or  the  character  of  his  subsequent  writings. 
Already  that  strong  individuality  had  displayed  itself, 
which  was  to  issue  in  the  conquest  of  new  fields 
for  the  creative  energy  of  the  poet,  of  a  new 
poetical  philosophy  for  the  analysis  of  the  critic. 
Already  in  the  pursuit  of  his  boyish  amusements 
— in  springing  woodcocks  in  autumn,  in  taking 
nests  in  spring,  in  skating  on  the  frozen  lake  of 
Esthwaite,  or  rowing  on  bright  half-holidays  with 
his  companions  along  '  the  plain  of  Windermere,' 
he  had  begun  to  feel  the  presence  of  Nature  in 
the  sky  and  on  the  earth ;  already  had  he  become 
a  worshipper  in  that  shrine,  of  which  he  afterwards 
was  the  acknowledged  high-priest. 

It  would  be  as  sacrilegious,  as  it  is  unnecessary, 
to  translate  into  bald  prose  those  high-coloured  and 
nobly  musical  passages  of  the  Prelude^  in  which  he 
traces  the  influence  of  the  grand  and  beautiful  scenery 
amid  which  his  school-days  were  fortunately  passed. 


126  USSATS. 

in  awakening  his  sensibility,  in  associating  his  animal 
sensations  with  outward  objects,  that  were  mag- 
nificent and  lovely,  and  so  ministering  to  genial  and 
happy  moods  of  mind,  by  the  constant  supply  of  pure 
and  ennobling  pleasures.  As  pleasurable  excitement 
is  almost  the  necessary  condition  of  poetical  activity, 
too  much  importance  can  hardly  be  attributed  to  the 
circumstances  which  secured  to  Wordsworth,  in  his 
most  plastic  time  of  life,  an  unfailing  flow  of  joyous 
spirits  from  purely  elevating  sources,  and  preserved 
him,  while  reason  was  yet  undeveloped,  and  self- 
command  had  not  yet  become  a  habit,  from  those 
temptations  to  coarse  pleasures,  and  even  gross  vices, 
which  form  so  weighty  a  counterpoise  to  the  scholar- 
ship and  manly  training  of  our  great  public  schools. 
Nor  was  this  awakening  passion  for  nature  less  eflfi- 
cacious  or  important  in  thus  early  laying  the  found- 
ation of  those  habits  of  observation  and  reflection 
which  not  only  supplied  him  through  life  with  his 
matter  for  poetical  composition,  but  freed  him  from 
that  necessity  for  companionship  and  conversation 
which  weakens  the  character,  and  fritters  away  the 
strength  of  so  many  men  of  genius.  Wordsworth, 
even  as  a  boy,  was  self-sufficing  and  independent; 
solitude  to  him  was  blithe  society,  though  no  one 
took  more  interest  in  boyish  sports,  or  speaks  with 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  127 

more  affectionate  remembrance  of  boyish  friendships. 
What  helped  to  this  was  the  usual  degree  in  which 
a  genuine  poetic  activity  was  conjoined  with,  and 
awakened  by,  his  receptive  sensibility.  *  A  plastic 
power, '  he  tells  us. 

Abode  witli  me;    a  forming  hand,  at  times 
Kebellious,  acting  in  a  devious  mood; 
A  local  spirit  of  his  own,  at  war 
"With  general  tendency ;   but,  for  the  most, 
Subservient  strictly  to  external  things. 
With  which  it  communed.     An  auxiliar  light 
Came  from  my  mind,  which  on  the  setting  sun 
Bestowed  new  splendour;   the  melodious  birds. 
The  fluttering  breezes,  fountains  that  run  on 
Murmuring  so  sweetly  in  themselves,  obeyed 
A  like  dominion;   and  the  midnight  storm 
Grew  darker  in  the  presence  of  my  eye. 

The  prominence  which  is  given  in  Wordsworth's 
poetry  to  this  reciprocal  action  of  external  nature  and 
the  mind  of  man,  is  that  which  mainly  distinguishes 
him  from,  and  raises  him  above,  merely  descriptive 
or  merely  didactic  poets.  Nature  to  him  was  not 
a  canvas  variously  coloured,  from  which  he  was  to 
select  what  soothed  or  excited  the  sense,  and  paint 
in  words  what  was  given  to  him  from  without;  nor 
was  man  an  incarnate  intellect  whose  senses  were 
merely  channels  of  communication  between  his  animal 
wants  and  the  material  objects  which  supplied  them, 
or,  at  best,  purveyors  for  the  fancy  in  her  airy  dreams 


128  ESSAYS. 

and  unreal  analogies ;  but  the  one  was  related  to 
the  other  by  a  vital  and  organic  union,  which 
admitted  of  no  severance,  but  to  the  detriment,  if  not 
the  destruction  of  moral  and  spiritual  life.  Nature 
was  to  him  a  mystic  book,  written  by  the  finger  of 
God,  whose  characters  were  indeed  discernible  by  the 
senses,  but  whose  meaning  was  only  to  be  deciphered 
by  the  imagination — 

By  observation  of  affinities 

In  objects  where  no  brotherhood  exists 

To  passive  minds. 

The  book  of  Nature  and  the  world  of  imagination 
are  phrases,  indeed,  that  have  long  been  favourites 
with  men  of  sensibility  and  men  of  science;  but 
the  truths  that  have  been  read  in  the  one  have 
usually  been  generalizations  of  the  analytic  under- 
standing, or  the  facts  upon  which  such  generalizations 
are  founded,  while  the  other  has  been  soothed  upon 
as  peopled  only  by  chimeras,  and  given  up  to  the 
visionary  and  the  dreamer.  Mr.  Wordsworth's 
originality  in  this  matter  consists  in  his  assertion  of 
a  science  of  appearances,  speaking  through  the  senses 
to  the  heart  and  soul,  acting  on  and  acted  upon  by 
the  imagination,  in  accordance  with  laws,  which  it 
is  the  poet's  business  to  discover  and  obey ;  and  not 
simply  in  this  assertion  of  a  philosophy  of  aesthetic, 


*         WORBSWORTE'S  POEMS.  129 

which  would  justify  such  expressions  as  the  'sensuous 
false  and  true,'  in  opposition  to  the  pure  idealist 
theory  of  the  falseness  of  all  sensuous  preception; 
but  furthermore  and  mainly  in  the  importance  he 
attaches  to  a  right  understanding  of  this  science 
for  the  production  of  genuine  poetry,  and  a  practical 
obedience  to  it  for  the  building  up  of  the  moral 
being  of  the  individual  man.  Whether  his  con- 
clusions on  this  point  are  the  result  of  what  he 
possessed  in  common  with  all  men,  or  of  the  ex- 
ceptional predominance,  of  the  imaginative  activity 
in  him,  may  perhaps  admit  of  discussion.  Certain 
it  is,  that  more  than  almost  any  poet,  he  was 
from  childhood  '  of  imagination  all  compact,'  and 
equally  certain  is  it  that,  unless  social  arrangements 
can  be  totally  altered,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the 
bulk  of  our  population  can  be  placed  in  circum- 
stances at  all  admitting,  not  to  say  favourable  to, 
the  cultivation  of  the  imaginative  power;  while  to 
suppose  them  for  this  reason  debarred  from  at- 
taining moral  and  religious  excellence,  would  indeed 
sadden  our  prospects  for  the  future,  change  all  our 
boasted  civilization  to  a  diabolic  delusion,  and  justify 
any  schemes,  however  extravagant,  that  promised  to 
relieve  our  upper  classes  from  so  heinous  a  crime,  and 
our  lower  classes  of  towns  and  cities,  and  in  spite  of 

K 


130  USSATS. 

Mr.  Wordsworth,  the  majority  of  our  peasants,  from 
so  dire  a  destruction.  This  theory  of  the  function 
of  imagination  in  the  human  economy,  and  of  the 
function  of  external  nature  in  awakening  and  evoking 
its  power,  is  so  prominent  in  all  Mr.  Wordsworth's 
higher  poetry — is  so  much  the  key-note  to  what  his 
earlier  critics  called  his  mysticism  and  affected 
raptures,  that  we  have  felt  it  necessary  to  allude  to 
it  somewhat  at  length,  though  to  handle  it  at  all 
adequately  would  require  a  philosophical  treatise, 
which  has  never  yet  heen  written,  though  often  talked 
about.  As  originating  in  his  own  boyish  experiences, 
it  properly  belonged  to  this  part  of  our  subject,  and 
may  further  be  taken  as  an  instance  of  the  limitation 
which  is  necessary  in  applying  any  of  Mr.  Words- 
worth's theories  of  society.  They  are  all  personal 
experiences  thrown  into  the  form  of  general  truths, 
with  that  strength  of  phrase  and  colour  of  passion 
which  belong  to  an  essentially  subjective  view. 

We  may  conclude  these  records  of  Wordsworth's 
schoolboy  experience  by  mentioning  that  he  was 
already  a  poet  actual  as  well  as  potential,  and  that 
a  copy  of  verses  in  heroic  metre,  written  by  him  in 
his  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  year  (it  is  rather  doubtful 
which),  on  the  second  centenary  from  the  found- 
ation of  the  school  by  Archbishop  Sandys,  is  pre- 


WOEBSWORTE'S  POEMS.  131 

served;  of  which,  though  the  poet  himself  speaks 
slightingly,  as  a  tame  imitation  of  Pope's  versifica- 
tion, and  a  little  in  his  style,  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  very  few  boys  of  that  age  could  have 
possibly  written  them. 

His  father  had  died  while  William  was  yet  a 
schoolboy,  in  the  year  1783.  Lord  Lonsdale, 
whose  agent  he  was,  refused  to  settle  his  accounts, 
and  the  sum  of  which  the  children,  four  sons  and 
one  daughter,  were  thus  deprived,  was  the  bulk 
of  their  fortune.  It  was  afterwards  paid  in  1802, 
with  interest,  by  the  second  Earl  of  Lonsdale;  but 
meanwhile,  the  family  of  the  Wordsworths  were 
dependent  upon  their  relations,  and  William  was 
sent  by  his  uncles,  Richard  Wordsworth  and  Chris- 
topher Crackenthorpe,  in  the  year  1787,  to  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge. 

From  what  has  been  stated  of  William  Words- 
worth's studies,  attainments,  character,  and  tastes, 
while  he  was  at  Hawkshead,  no  reasonable  surprise 
can  be  entertained  that  the  pursuits,  the  honours, 
and  the  emoluments  of  Cambridge  failed  to  excite 
his  industry  or  stimulate  his  ambition.  The  ex- 
cellence to  which  the  University  at  that  time  confined 
her  rewards  and  distinctions  was  limited  within  the 
range  of  mathematics,  pure  and  applied,  and  that 
k2 


132  USSATS. 

highly  valuable,  but  by  no  means  comprehensive 
scholarship,  which  is  expressed  by  the  phrase,  a 
knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek;  what  is  excluded 
being  simply  the  literature,  the  philosophy  and  the 
history  of  the  two  great  model  nations,  and  what  is 
included  being  the  power  of  translating  correctly  at 
sight,  and  of  composing  in  prose  and  verse.  We 
say  at  that  time,  because,  though  very  little  extension 
has  actually  taken  place,  yet  a  new  and  enlarged 
system  has  just  come  into  operation,  from  which  the 
most  beneficial  results  on  national  education  are  to 
be  expected.  Moreover,  Wordsworth  went  to  a 
college  which  is  now  especially,  and  was,  we  believe, 
exclusively  devoted  to  the  study  of  mathematics.  It 
is  more  than  possible  that  those  men  in  whom  taste 
and  imagination  are  predominant  are,  as  the  learned 
Master  of  Trinity  would  maintain,  the  very  men  who 
would  profit  most  by  the  rigid  processes  and  absolute 
results  of  mathematics ;  poets  have  themselves  been 
famous  for  saying  and  writing  fine  things  about  the 
beauty  of  mathematical  demonstrations,  and  the 
winning  charms  of  pure  truth ;  Wordsworth  has  made 
Euclid's  Elements  the  subject  of  an  exquisite  episode 
in  his  autobiographical  poem ;  but  equally  certain  it 
is  that  either  in  cautious  self-denial,  fearing  to  be 
hooked  for  life  by  the  too  seducing  bait  of  the  Lady 


WORBSWORTE' S  FOEMS  133 

of  lines  and  angles,  or  that  the  brightness  of  her 
heavenly  glory  should  dazzle  them  into  blindness, 
or  scorch  them  into  annihilation,  or  from  some  other 
cause  equally  powerful,  poets  generally  content  them- 
selves with  singing  the  praises  of  the  sublime  and 
starry  science,  and  leave  to  others  the  profit  and 
the  praise  of  worshipping  in  her  temple,  and  as- 
suming the  robes  and  crown  of  her  hierophants. 
Wordsworth  was  no  exception, — no  trace  of  his 
mathematical  studies  appears  in  the  records  of  his 
college  life,  no  result  beyond  that  of  an  ordinary 
B.A.  degree  appears  to  have  attended  them.  The 
only  positive  result  of  his  Cambridge  reading  seems 
to  be  the  acquisition  of  Italian.  We  are  not  aware 
that  he  ever  regretted  his  neglect  of  University 
studies,  though  his  nephew  implies  as  much,  found- 
ing his  belief  on  an  exhortation  addressed,  we 
presume,  to  himself  by  his  uncle,  on  the  importance 
of  mastering  the  classical  writers  before  coming  to 
the  modern;  and  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the  son 
of  a  friend,  regretting  that  he  had  given  up  reading 
for  honours.  We  would  suggest  to  Dr.  Christopher 
Wordsworth  that  his  uncle  might  see  good  reason 
for  advising  him  to  confine  his  attention  to  that 
which  constituted  his  path  to  distinction,  without 
at  all  regretting  the  deliberate  choice  of  his  own 


134  JESSATS. 

life,  or  implying  the  general  advisability  of  the 
course  he  recommended  to  one  young  man  of  sin- 
gularly academic  mind  and  character.  But  this  is 
only  a  specimen  of  the  way  in  which  the  nephew 
has  reflected  his  own  likeness  upon  the  canvas 
prepared  for  his  uncle.  But  to  return  to  the  poet. 
Cambridge  seems  to  have  done  nothing  for  him ; 
not  only  were  the  studies  of  the  place  distasteful 
to  him,  but  the  country  was  eminently  disqualified 
for  exciting,  or  even  sustaining,  the  poetic  suscep- 
tibility of  one  who  had  been,  up  to  that  time, 
a  free  wanderer  among  the  hills  and  vales  and 
lakes  of  lovely,  romantic  Westmoreland.  Even 
Wordsworth,  with  his  creative  gift,  failed  to  gain 
an  insight  into  what  there  is  in  that  flat,  fenny 
district  capable  of  conversion  into  exquisite  poetry. 
That  conquest  has  been  achieved  by  a  younger 
poet ;  and  now  and  henceforth,  '  Mariana  in  the 
moated  Grange,'  and  the  'Dying  Swan,'  stand  to 
give  the  lie  to  any  one  who  dares  to  call  Cam- 
bridge and  Lincoln  utterly  barren  of  nourishment 
for  minds  which  crave  external  beauty,  or  languish 
and  sicken  from  starvation.  We  may  add,  from 
personal  acquaintance,  that  these  flat  counties  are 
famous  for  their  glorious  sunsets.  But  Words- 
worth's heart  was  all  the  time  among  his  mountains 


WORDS WORTR'S  POEMS.  135 

and  his  waterfalls;  the  Cam  to  him  was  specifically 
the  silent  Cam;  and  hut  for  his  vacations,  the 
poetic  spirit  would  have  heen  imperilled.  By  these, 
his  love  and  intense  enjoyment  of  nature  were 
sustained,  enhanced  by  months  of  absence  and 
longing  and  regret;  and  with  them  began  now  to 
appear  another  range  of  faculties,  called  into  ex- 
ercise by  the  varieties  of  character  his  Cambridge 
life  presented  to  him,  and  the  contrast  it  afforded 
to  the  life  he  had  left  behind  him.  He  began  now 
to  take  that  interest  in  observing  the  passions, 
characters,  and  actions  of  the  men  and  women  around 
him,  which,  supplying  him  with  the  incidents,  the 
feelings,  and,  to  some  extent,  with  the  very  language 
of  his  most  original  minor  poems,  finally  enabled 
him  to  rear  the  noblest  edifice  of  modem  song, 
where,  uniting  in  himself  the  philosophical  breadth 
of  Coleridge  with  the  minute  touches  and  more 
than  the  homely  pathos  of  Crabbe,  he  forms  into 
one  organic  whole  the  profoundest  speculations  on 
society  with  the  simplest  annals  of  the  poor.  It 
is  only  a  proof  of  the  exceeding  purity  and  elevation 
of  his  character,  that  he  finds  ground  for  mild 
self-reproach  in  the  innocent  enjoyment  of  rustic 
balls  and  innocent  flirtations — 'love-likings,'  as  he 
prettily  calls  them — with  rustic  belles,  which  seem 


136  USSAYS. 

to  have  partially  occupied  his  first  long  vacation. 
Truth  to  say,  we  wish  he  had  taken  a  more  lively 
interest  in  such  matters.  The  absence  of  this 
side  of  human  nature  from  Wordsworth's  poetry 
imparts  to  it  a  heaviness,  a  monotony,  which  repels 
the  young  and  the  worldly,  to  whose  minds  his 
lofty  wisdom  and  his  noble  seriousness  might  per- 
chance find  admission  and  welcome.  But  great 
men  are  not  to  be  fashioned  after  our  will,  but 
according  to  the  ordering  of  Him  who  sends  them 
to  do  his  work  in  the  world ;  and  special  work 
demands  a  special  training.  It  is  only  this  con- 
sideration that  prevents  us  from  seriously  regret- 
ting that  Wordsworth  did  not,  as  a  young  man, 
join  more  heartily  in  what  are  commonly  called 
the  pleasures  of  the  world.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that,  had  he  done  so,  he  would  have  ex- 
erted an  earlier  and  a  wider  influence  on  society; 
he  would  have  understood  better  the  pursuits  and  the 
pleasures  of  the  men  and  women  of  cities ;  he  would 
have  sympathized  more  with  the  life  of  the  burgher 
classes.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that,  in  that  case,  he  would  scarcely  have  so  fasci- 
nated and  controlled  the  'fit  audience,  though  few,' 
whom  no  one  ever  asked  for  more  sincerely  or  more 
successfully;   his  poetical  creed  would  scarcely,  in 


WORBSWORTWS  POEMS.  137 

that  case,  have  had  its  apostles,  its  martyrs,  its 
confessors ;  it  would  not  have  been  so  fiercely  com- 
bated, and  would  not  therefore  have  exhibited  such 
a  marked  triumph  of  truth,  have  been  rooted  so 
deeply  in  the  conviction  of  its  votaries.  Had  his 
genius,  again,  played  more  upon  the  surface  of  society, 
dealt  more  with  the  passions  and  the  vanities  of  men 
congregated  together,  it  might  have  lost  something 
of  that  depth,  of  that  permanent  and  elemental 
character  that  now  renders  his  reflections  and  specu- 
lations so  valuable  and  interesting  to  minds  at  all 
kindred  to  his  own.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  conceive  the 
simplicity  and  calm  of  Wordsworth's  life  and  cha- 
racter failing  to  unfit  him  for  fairly  estimating 
English  middle-class  life  and  people,  with  their 
multiform  bustle,  their  eager  pursuit  of  wealth,  their 
love  and  need  of  outward  excitement.  With  all  his 
greatness,  he  was  neither  Shakespeare  nor  Goethe; 
and  probably  had  he  striven  for  manysidedness,  he 
would  have  been  less  than  he  was.  And  so,  recalling 
our  half-formed  expression  of  regret,  we  may  accept 
the  fact,  in  all  thankfulness  and  humility,  that  he 
soon  gave  up  the  chase  of  trivial  pleasures,  and 
returned  to  where  his  deeper  passion  lay ;  though,  as 
we  have  hinted  above,  these  trivial  pleasures  of  his 
Cambridge  and  vacation  life  were,  in  all  probability, 


138  ESSAYS. 

the  appointed  means  of  evoking  that  meditative  ob- 
servation of  men  and  character,  which  makes  his 
poetry  no  less  rich  in  wisdom  than  in  beautj  and 
feeling.  One  special  occasion  he  notes,  when,  after 
being  all  night  at  a  country  ball,  his  whole  being 
was  stirred  within  him,  as — 

Magnificent 
The  morning  rose  in  memorable  pomp; 

and  there  came  upon  him  one  of  those  crises,  so 
marked  in  the  history  of  great  minds,  which  colour 
the  whole  after-course  of  existence.  '  To  the  brim,' 
he  says, 

My  heart  was  full;  I  made  no  vows,  but  vows 
"Were  then  made  for  me;   bond  tmknown  to  me 
"Was  given,  that  I  should  be,  else  sinning  greatly, 
A  dedicated  Spirit.     On  I  walked 
In  thankful  blessedness,  which  yet  survives. 

And  to  this  consecration,  the  silent  influences  of  the 
morning,  poured  upon  his  head  by  the  invisible  hand, 
he  remained  faithful  as  few  priests  have  ever  been 
to  their  calling.  What  the  world  has  gained  by  his 
loyalty  is  to  be  seen  in  his  works;  what  he  might 
otherwise  have  become,  may  be  gathered  from  those 
parts  of  the  Prelude  in  which  he  records  his 
Cambridge  and  London  experience,  especially  from 
that  magnificent  passage  where,  describing  his  general 
impression  of  University  life,  he   clothes  the  stern 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  139 

denunciation  of  a  Juvenal  in  language  as  strong  as 
Drjden's,  as  rich,  sensuous,  and  full  of  meaning  as 
Shakespeare's : — 

All  degrees 
And  shapes  of  spurious  fame  and  short-lived  praise 
Here  sate  in  state,  and  fed  with  daily  alms 
Eetainers  won  away  from  solid  good; 
And  here  was  Labour,  his  own  bond-slave ;  Hope, 
That  never  set  the  pain  against  the  prize ; 
Idleness,  halting  with  his  weary  clog, 
And  poor  misguided  Shame,  and  witless  Fear, 
And  simple  Pleasui'e,  foraging  for  Death ; 
Honour  misplaced,  and  Dignity  astray; 
Feuds,  factions,  flatteries,  enmity,  and  guile, 
Murmuring  submission,  and  bald  government 
(The  idol  weak  as  the  idolater). 
And  Decency  and  Custom  starving  Truth, 
And  blind  Authority  beating  with  his  staff 
The  child  that  might  have  led  him;    Emptiness 
Followed  as  of  good  omen,  and  meek  Worth, 
Left  to  herself,  unheard  of  and  imknown. 

In  connexion  with  this  noble  passage,  showing 
what  Wordsworth  could  have  done  had  he  chosen  to 
cultivate  the  higher  form  of  satire,  it  is  interesting  to 
find  him  afterwards  declining  to  allow  the  publication 
of  some  imitations  of  Juvenal,  executed  as  a  young 
man,  though  solicited  by  his  friend  Archdeacon 
Wrangham,  and  basing  his  refusal  on  moral  objections 
to  the  lowering  influence  of  this  species  of  com- 
position. 

Wordsworth's   last  long  vacation  was   spent  in 


140  JESSAT8. 

travelling  abroad  with  his  friend  Mr.  Jones.     The 
tourists  landed  at  Calais   on  July   13th,   1790,  the 
eve  of  the  day  when  Louis  XVI.  took  the  oath  of 
fidelity  to   the  new  constitution;   proceeded  princi- 
pally  on    foot  through    France,    Savoy,   Piedmont, 
North  Italy,    Switzerland,    and   up   the   Ehine,   re- 
turning in  time   for  the   Camhridge   October  term. 
The  poem    entitled  'Descriptive   Sketches,'    is   the 
record  of  this  continental  tour.     A  more  important 
result  of  it  was   the  warmer   sympathy  it  excited 
in  young  Wordsworth  with   the  then  fair  promise 
and  exulting  hopes   of  the   French  revolution.     In 
a  letter  to   his   sister   Dorothy,   from   the   Lake   of 
Constance,  he   speaks   in   enthusiastic  terms  of  the 
French  as  compared  with  the  Swiss,  adding,  'But 
I  must  remind  you  that  we   crossed   at   the  time 
when  the  whole  nation  was  mad  with  joy,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  revolution.      It  was  a  most  interest- 
ing period   to   be   in   France ;    and  we   had  many 
delightful   scenes  where  the  interest   of  the  picture 
was  owing  solely  to  this  cause.'      It  is  more  than 
ever  superfluous  for  us,  who  have  since  that  time 
been   witness  to  two   French  revolutions,   and  the 
enthusiastic  hope   they  excited,  with   the  miserable 
disappointment  that  has  in  each  case  ensued,  to  go 
far  in  search    of  reasons   to  justify   or   explain   the 


WORDSWORTH'S  FOEMS.  141 

sympathy  which  Wordsworth,  in  common  with  all 
the  generous-hearted  young  men  of  his  day,  felt  and 
expressed  with  the  first  and  greatest  of  the  demo- 
cratic convulsions  which  have  since  been  constantly 
working  to  upheave  and  alter  the  surface  of  European 
society.  The  man  who  at  that  time  had  not  so 
sympathized  must  have  been  duller  than  an  owl, 
or  wiser  than  an  angel.  It  is  sufficient  here  to 
observe,  that  when  the  French  revolution  departed 
from  its  first  love  and  its  first  faith,  and  developed 
into  that  hybrid  monster  of  cruelty,  tyranny,  and 
licentiousness,  which  made  the  despotism  of  the 
Empire  a  welcome  refuge,  Wordsworth  was  not 
misled  by  the  vanity  of  consistency,  or  dazzled 
by  the  splendour  of  military  achievement,  to  tolerate 
its  excesses  and  palliate  its  crimes.  Meanwhile, 
till  that  period  anived,  he  welcomed  the  advent 
of  the  people's  triumphs  with  enthusiastic  faith 
and  joy. 

Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  aliye, 
But  to  be  young  was  very  heayen! 

He  took  his  degree  in  January  1791,  and  in 
November  of  the  same  year  we  find  him  returning  to 
France,  which  he  did  not  again  quit  till  the  close  of 
the  following  year.  A  considerable  portion  of  this 
period  he  spent  at  Orleans  and  Blois.      His  most 


142  USSAYS. 

intimate  friend  was  General  Beaupuis,  whose  character 
as  philosopher,  patriot,  and  soldier,  was  eminently 
calculated  to  attract  the  admiration  of  a  young  and 
ardent  poetic  mind.  How  deep  was  the  impression 
made  upon  him  during  these  eventful  months,  and 
how  keenly  he  sympathized  with  each  new  phase 
of  the  popular  movement,  is  stamped  alike  upon  his 
earlier  and  later  poems ;  and  manifests  itself  equally 
in  the  glowing  passion  of  his  hopes,  and  in  the 
indignant  bitterness  of  his  disappointment.  A  purer 
passion  never  warmed  the  heart  of  patriot  or  poet. 

It  was  probably  fortunate  for  him  that  circum- 
stances— we  presume  the  want  of  money — compelled 
him  to  return  to  England  at  the  close  of  the  year,  as 
he  was  intimately  connected  with  the  Brissotins,  and 
might  have  shared  their  destruction,  had  he  stayed 
till  the  following  May.  'William,'  says  his  sister, 
in  a  letter  of  the  22nd  December,  1792,  'is  in 
London ;  he  writes  to  me  regularly,  and  is  a  most 
affectionate  brother.' 

The  extent  to  which  his  political  opinions  were 
at  this  time  identified  with  the  principles  of  the 
French  revolution,  may  be  gathered  from  an  un- 
published pamphlet,  entitled,  *  A  Letter  to  the 
Bishop  of  Llandaff  on  the  political  principles  con- 
tained in  an  appendix  to  one  of  his  lordship's  recent 


WORBSWORTE'S  FOEMS.  143 

sermons,'  and  from  a  letter  to  a  friend  named 
Matthews.  He  disapproves  of  hereditary  monarchy, 
hereditary  distinctions  and  privileged  orders  of  every 
species,  as  necessarily  counteracting  the  progress  of 
human  improvement;  and  holds  that  even  social 
privileges  and  distinctions  should  be  conferred  by 
the  elective  voice  of  the  people.  He  emphatically 
declares  himself  not  an  admirer  of  the  British  con- 
stitution.    '  Yet,'  he  adds — 

In  my  ardour  to  attain  the  goal,  I  do  not  forget  the  nature  of  the 
ground  where  the  race  is  to  be  run.  The  destruction  of  those  institu- 
tions which  I  condemn,  appears  to  me  to  be  hastening  on  too  rapidly. 
I  recoil  from  the  very  idea  of  a  revolution.  I  am  a  determined  enemy 
to  every  species  of  violence,  I  see  no  connexion,  but  what  the 
obstinacy  of  pride  and  ignorance  renders  necessary,  between  justice 
and  the  sword, — between  reason  and  bonds.  I  deplore  the  miser- 
able condition  of  the  French,  and  think  that  tee  can  only  be  guarded 

from  the  same  scourge  by  the  imdaunted  efforts  of  good  men 

I  severely  condemn  all  inflammatory  addresses  to  the  passions  of 
men.  I  know  that  the  multitude  walk  in  darkness.  I  would  put 
into  each  man's  hands  a  lantern,  to  guide  him ;  and  not  have  him  to 
set  out  upon  his  journey  depending  for  illumination  on  abortive 
flashes  of  lightning,  or  the  coruscations  of  transitory  meteors. 

With  principles  so  decidedly  republican,  and 
sentiments  so  opposed  to  violence,  physical  force, 
or  even  inflammatory  agitation ;  with  such  a  clear 
consciousness  of  the  necessity  of  knowledge  and 
virtue,  as  the  only  basis  and  safeguard  of  popular 
liberties,   a  clear-sighted   observer  might  even  thus 


144  ASSAYS. 

early  have  anticipated  the  course   of  Wordsworth's 
opinions  on  the  French  revolution,  and  on  politics, 
practical    and    speculative,  'in    general.      The    im- 
mediate effect  of  his   disappointment  was  to   cloud 
his  hopes  and  weaken  his  faith   in   human  nature; 
and    his    painful    feelings    were    still    farther    em- 
bittered,  and   clashing  sympathies  jarred  the  more 
harshly  within   him,  when,    in   consequence   of  the 
execution  of  Louis  XVI.,  this  country  declared  war 
against  France.     During  the  year  1793,  he  published 
the  poems  entitled,  '  The  Evening  Walk,'  and  '  De- 
scriptive   Sketches,'    the    latter   of   which    he    had 
composed  principally  in  his  walks  along  the  banks 
of  the   Loire  the  preceding  summer.       Interesting 
as  these  poems  are  in  themselves,  as  the  first-fruits 
of  an  original  genius,  they  are  more  important   as 
having  in  the  following  year  attracted  the  attention 
of  Coleridge,  then  an  undergraduate  at  Cambridge, 
and  having  thus  laid  the  foundations  of  an  intimacy 
which  exercised  a  powerful  influence  upon  these  two 
great  men,  and  contributed  to  enrich   and   expand 
their  minds,  no  less  than  it  ministered  to  the  enjoy- 
ments of  both.      *  Seldom,  if  ever,'  says  Coleridge 
in   the   Biographia   Literaria,    'was   the   emergence 
of  an  original  poetic  genius  above  the  literary  horizon 
more  evidently  announced.'      But  poetry  can  never 


WORBSWORTS' S  POEMS.  145 

be  counted  on  as  a  means  of  support ;  and  hitherto 
Wordsworth  had  been  almost  wholly  dependent  on 
his  relations,  the  debt  to  his  father's  estate  from 
Lord  Lonsdale  not  having  been  yet  recovered.  He 
was  therefore  urged  to  make  choice  of  a  profession ; 
or  rather,  the  Church  was  pointed  out  as  the  only 
one  open  to  him.  In  spite,  however,  of  remonstrating 
relatives  and  an  empty  purse,  he  resolved  not  to 
take  orders.  The  consequence  naturally  was,  that 
relatives  from  remonstrance  turned  to  indignation 
and  coldness,  and  the  purse  was  not  likely  to  fill 
itself.  As  a  means  of  accomplishing  this  desirable 
object,  he  proposed  to  his  friend  Matthews,  then 
engaged  on  a  London  newspaper,  to  join  him  in 
a  monthly  periodical,  to  be  called  the  Philanthropist^ 
the  principles  of  which  were  to  be  republican,  but 
not  revolutionary.  He  was  himself  to  contribute 
to  it  criticisms  on  poetry,  painting,  gardening,  &c., 
besides  essays  on  morals  and  politics.  The  scheme, 
however,  came  to  nothing,  and  his  next  attempt  was 
to  secure  employment  on  a  London  paper,  only  con- 
ditioning that  it  should  be  an  opposition  paper ;  '  for,' 
says  he,  '  I  cannot  abet,  in  the  smallest  degree,  the 
measures  pursued  by  the  present  ministry ;'  adding, 
at  the  same  time,  '  I  know  that  many  good  men  are 
persuaded  of  the   expediency  of  the  present   war.' 

L 


146  i;ssArs. 

He  was  at  this  time  engaged  in  attendance  on  the 
sick-bed  of  a  young  friend,  Raisley  Calvert,  who  was 
dying  of  consumption.  Before  the  newspaper  en- 
gagement was  actually  concluded,  this  young  man 
(who  was  wise  enough  to  discern  Wordsworth's 
genius,  and  was  impressed  with  the  persuasion  that, 
if  not  impeded  hj  the  necessity  of  other  occupations, 
he  would  benefit  mankind  by  his  writings)  died,  and 
left  to  his  friend  the  sum  of  nine  hundred  pounds. 
Thus  relieved  from  all  immediate  care,  he  gave 
himself  entirely  to  his  poetic  impulse,  and  devoted 
himself  with  unswerving  aim  and  untiring  energy 
to  what  he  felt  to  be  his  appointed  task.  This 
bold  step  was  justified,  not  only  by  the  clearness  of 
purpose  and  consciousness  of  power  which  prompted 
it,  but  by  the  abstemious  habits  and  simple  tastes 
which  are  so  often  wanting  in  poets.  Writing  some 
time  afterwards  to  Sir  George  Beaumont,  he  says, 
*  Upon  the  interest  of  the  £900,  £400.  being  laid 
out  in  annuity,  with  £200.  deducted  from  the  prin- 
cipal, and  £100.,  legacy  to  my  sister,  and  a  £100. 
more  which  the  Lyrical  Ballads  have  brought  me, 
my  sister  and  I  contrived  to  live  seven  years — 
nearly  eight.'  People  who  can  so  live  may  follow 
the  promptings  of  genius  without  the  imputation  of 
folly,  rashness,  or  vain  self-confidence.     The  legacy 


WORDS  WORTH'S  POEMS.  147 

came  to  Wordsworth  in  the  early  part  of  1795, 
and  in  the  autumn  of  that  year,  he  and  his  sister, 
who  thenceforth  was  his  constant  companion,  were 
settled  at  K-acedown  Lodge,  near  Crewkeme,  in 
Dorsetshire.  It  was  here  that  he  composed  the 
imitations  of  Juvenal,  alluded  to  hefore,  and  the 
tragedy  of  the  Borderers,  which,  after  being  offered 
to  Mr.  Harris,  the  manager  of  Covent  Garden,  and 
by  him  declined,  remained  in  MS.  till  the  year 
1842.  Wordsworth  assigns  it  to  his  sister's  benign 
influence  upon  him  during  this  period,  that  he  was 
saved  from  lasting  despondency,  consequent  upon 
the  failure  of  his  political  hopes.  Depressed  in 
heart,  bewildered  in  intellect,  in  danger  even  of 
letting  slip  the  great  saving  truths  of  Reason,  and 
taking  refuge  in  abstract  Science  from  the  scoflfing 
Spirit  by  which  a  man  revenges  himself  on  his  own 
delusions,  he  thanks 

The  bounteous  Giver  of  all  good, 
That  the  beloved  sister  in  whose  sight 
Those  days  were  passed  *  * 

*  *  *  *  * 

Maintained  for  me  a  saving  intercourse 
With  my  true  self       *  ♦  • 

*  *  *  *  * 

She,  in  the  midst  of  all,  preserved  me  still 
A  poet,  made  me  seek  beneath  that  name, 
And  that  alone,  my  office  upon  earth. 

How  complete  was  the  recovery  of  the  poet  under 
l2 


148  USSATS. 

the  humanizing  and  tranquillizing  influence  of  this 
loving  and  beloved  sister,  is  seen  from  an  interest- 
ing passage  in  the  Biographia  Literaria.  Speaking 
of  his  residence  at  Stowey,  Coleridge  says,  '  I  was 
so  fortunate  as  to  acquire,  shortly  after  my  settle- 
ment there,  an  invaluable  blessing  in  the  society  and 
neighbourhood  of  one,  to  whom  I  could  look  up 
with  equal  reverence,  whether  I  regarded  him  as 
a  poet,  a  philosopher,  or  a  man.  His  conversation 
extended  to  almost  all  subjects,  except  physics  and 
politics;  with  the  latter  he  never  troubled  himself.^ 
A  short  time  previous  to  the  removal  of  Wordsworth 
and  his  sister  to  Alfoxden,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Stowey,  mentioned  in  the  above  passage,  Coleridge 
had  paid  them  a  visit  at  Racedown;  and  in  a  letter 
from  that  place  to  Cottle,  he  says  of  Wordsworth, 
— '  I  speak  with  heartfelt  sincerity,  and  I  think 
unblinded  judgment,  when  I  tell  you  that  I  feel 
a  little  man  by  his  side.'  Miss  Wordsworth  he 
describes  to  the  same  friend  in  terms  of  warm  and 
eloquent  admiration. 

She  is  a  woman  indeed,  in  mind,  I  mean,  and  in  heart;  for  her 
person  is  such  that  if  you  expected  to  see  a  pretty  woman,  you  would 
think  her  ordinary ;  if  you  expected  to  see  an  ordinary  woman  you 
would  think  her  pretty,  but  her  manners  are  simple,  ardent,  im- 
pressive. In  every  motion  her  innocent  soul  out-beams  so  brightly, 
that  who  saw  her  would  say  '  Guilt  was  a  thing  impossible  with  her.' 
Her  information  various ;  her  eye  watchful  in  minutest  observation  of 
Nature ;  and  her  taste  a  perfect  electrometer. 


WOItDS WORTH'S  FOEMS.  149 

On  the  side  of  the  Wordsworths  the  impression 
made  by  Coleridge  was  equally  favourable,  and  their 
removal  to  Alfoxden  was  mainly  induced  by  their 
desire  to  enjoy  his  society.  The  residence  at 
Alfoxden  commenced  in  July  1797,  and  the  twelve- 
month that  he  passed  there  he  describes  as  '  a  very 
pleasant  and  productive  time  of  his  life.'  Indeed, 
in  that  year,  with  the  exception  of  the  '  Female 
Vagrant,'  all  the  poems  contained  in  the  first  edition 
of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  were  composed.  To  the  same 
period  '  Peter  Bell '  is  due,  though  it  was  not  pub- 
lished till  1819.  How  the  Lyrical  Ballads  were 
a  joint  projection  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge — 
the  aim  with  which  they  were  written — the  principles 
which  dictated  their  choice  of  subjects  and  style  of 
diction — and  how  Coleridge  was  not  so  industrious 
as  his  coadjutor — and  that  the  book  was  finally 
published  by  Cottle  of  Bristol,  in  the  summer  of 
1798,  in  a  duodecimo  volume — moreover,  that  the 
reviews  were  terribly  severe,  and  that  of  five  hundred 
copies  the  greater  number  were  sold  as  remainder 
at  a  loss,  are  all  stale  topics  to  the  readers  of  the 
BiograpMa  Literaria  and  Cottle's  Reminiscences. 
Wordsworth  received  thirty  guineas  for  his  share  of 
the  copyright,  which  was,  with  Mr.  Cottle's  other 
literary  property,  subsequently  transferred  to  Messrs. 


150  £SSAT8. 

Longman,  wlio  estimating  this  particular  article  at 
nil,  returned  it,  at  Mr.  Cottle's  request,  and  it  was 
by  him  presented  to  the  authors.  This,  it  must  be 
confessed,  was  a  singular  reception  for  a  volume 
which,  however  the  public  taste  was  repelled  by  some 
of  its  contents,  yet  gave  to  the  light  Coleridge's 
*  Ancient  Mariner'  and  'Nightingale,'  with  Words- 
worth's *  Lines  left  upon  a  Yew-tree  seat'  and  '  Tintem 
Abbey,'  four  poems,  of  which  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say,  that  since  Milton's  voice  had  ceased,  such  noble 
strains  had  not  been  uttered  in  English  speech.  The 
famous  Preface,  to  which  Coleridge  justly,  we  think, 
attributes  much  of  the  acrimony  with  which  the 
Lake-school  of  poetry,  as  it  came  afterwards  to  be 
called,  was  assailed,  was  not  published  till  the  Lyrical 
Ballads  reached  a  second  edition,  and  were  augmented 
by  an  additional  volume;  so  that  the  public  neglect 
and  the  severity  of  the  critics  must  be  explained  by 
the  poems  themselves,  and  not  by  revolutionary 
views  of  poetic  composition,  systematically  and,  it 
must  be  owned,  somewhat  dogmatically  announced. 
These  views,  and  the  productions  which  were  the 
result  of  them,  have  been  the  subject  of  controversy 
and  discussion  from  that  time  to  this;  the  ablest 
critics  and  the  greatest  poets  have  borne  part  in  it. 
The  issue  may,  we  think,  be  fairly  stated  to  be,  that 


WORBSWORTE' S  POEMS.  151 

the  theory,  considered  as  polemic  in  reference  to  the 
style  of  poetry  of  which  Pope's  translation  of  Homer 
is  the  type  and  highest  example,  is  perfectly  suc- 
cessful and  generally  received;  that  the  agitation  to 
which  it  gave  rise  has  had  great  influence  in  winning 
men  back  to  perceive  the  material  that  lies  ready  for 
the  poet's  use  in  our  actual  daily  life,  and,  as  a  neces- 
sary consequence,  to  bring  poetic  language  nearer  to 
the  actual  phraseology  of  human  beings  in  a  state 
of  passion  or  vivid  emotion ;  but  that,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  theory  was  wanting  both  in  compre- 
hensiveness of  knowledge,  in  subtlety  of  analysis 
and  catholicity  of  taste — that,  in  a  word,  it  was  little 
more  than  polemic;  while  the  poems  composed  ex- 
pressly to  support,  or  at  least  under  the  definite  and 
conscious  influence  of  the  theory,  are  just  those  in 
which  Wordsworth  falls  farthest  below  himself,  and 
which,  even  now  that  his  name  is  honoured  by  the 
wise  and  good,  and  his  seat  is  among  the  immortals, 
are  regarded  by  all  but  a  very  few,  and  those  for  the 
most  part  persons  who  were  in  some  way  connected 
with  him,  as  experiments  which,  though  they  in  no 
wise  detract  from  his  fame,  have  added  no  laurel  to 
his  wreath.  In  fact,  the  best  refutation  of  Mr. 
Wordsworth's  theory,  considered  as  anything  more 
than    a   corrective    of    an    excess   in    the    opposite 


152  USSAYS. 

direction,  is  furnished  by  those  poems  of  his  own, 
in  which  he  follows  the  natural  bent  of  his  genius, 
unwarped  by  system — that  is,  in  at  least  nine-tenths 
of  his  published  works.  And  there,  whether  it 
be  the  play  of  the  fancy,  the  overflow  of  affection, 
the  visionary  power  of  imagination,  or  the  reason's 
rapture  of  intuition,  that  colours  his  mental  activity 
and  stirs  his  heart  and  tongue,  the  matter  is  the 
life-stuff  of  a  great  original  genius,  and  the  language 
and  versification  such  as  speak  the  faculty  and 
the  education  of  an  artist.  Mr.  Coleridge  puts  the 
matter  in  its  simplest  form,  when  he  says  of  'Alice 
Fell'  and  other  kindred  poems, — 'Notwithstanding 
the  beauties  which  are  to  be  found  in  each  of  them 
where  the  poet  interposes  the  music  of  his  own 
thoughts,  they  would  have  been  more  delightful  to 
me  in  prose,  told  and  managed  as  by  Mr.  Words- 
worth they  would  have  been,  in  a  moral  essay  or 
pedestrian  tour.'  These  last  words  were  peimed 
doubtless  in  the  vivid  recollection  of  many  pedestrian 
tours,  in  which  the  two  poets  were  accompanied  by 
the  beloved  sister,  who  was  almost  equally  dear  to 
them  both ;  and  who,  in  addition  to  her  charms  of 
mind  and  heart,  was 

Fleet  and  strong; 
And  down  the  rocks  could  leap  along, 
Like  rivulets  in  May. 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  153 

No  one  can  doubt  that  the  exquisite  poem  from 
which  these  lines  are  taken,  and  which  the  doctor- 
lawyer-coroner-editor  Pangloss,  who  does  not  re- 
present Finsbury,  secured  himself  from  wholesome 
oblivion  by  ridiculing  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
is  a  portrait  of  Dorothy  Wordsworth.  The  brother's 
description  may  help  us  to  feel  what  a  pedestrian 
tour  with  such  a  companion  must  have  been. 

And  slie  hath  smiles  to  earth  unkaown; 
Smiles,  that  with  motion  of  their  own 
Do  spread,  and  sink,  and  rise; 
That  come  and  go  with  endless  play, 
And  ever  as  they  pass  away 
Are  hidden  in  her  eyes. 

Well,  the  Lyrical  Ballads  were  published  in 
July  1798;  and  a  superfluity  of  cash  being  thus 
obtained,  the  trio  started  in  September  following  for 
Germany,  but  separated  at  Hamburg,  Coleridge 
proceeding  in  one  direction  by  himself,  and  the 
brother  and  sister  taking  up  their  residence  at  Goslar. 
The  only  person  of  eminence  whom  the  Wordsworths 
seem  to  have  been  introduced  to  was  Klopstock, 
that  'very  German  Milton'  who  is  recorded  as 
talking  like  an  *Erz-Philister';  the  substance  of  the 
conversation  is  published  in  that  portion  of  the  Bio- 
graphia  Liter  aria  called  '  Satyrane's  Letters.'  They 
spent  some  months  at  Goslar,  but  from  one  cause  or 


154  USSATS. 

other,  partly  Wordsworth's  dislike  of  smoke,  partly 
that  the  presence  of  his  sister  would,  according  to 
the  notions  of  the  place,  have  bound  him  to  enter- 
tain company  if  he  accepted  invitations,  which  his 
finances  prevented  him  from  doing — from  these  or 
other  causes,  they  failed  to  see  much  of  German 
society,  and  spent  their  time  in  learning  the  language 
by  reading  and  casual  conversation.  Upon  the 
whole,  we  can  point  to  no  specific  fruits  of  this  resi- 
dence abroad  in  Wordsworth's  writings ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  Coleridge  derived  from  it  a  knowledge  of 
German  philosophy  and  literature  which  coloured  the 
whole  of  his  after-life,  and  mainly,  though  not  en- 
tirely, in  consequence  of  which  he  is  looked  on  by 
many  as  the  angel  who  has  come  down  and  troubled 
the  waters  of  English  speculative  science,  so  that  they 
who  bathe  therein  derive  from  them  healing  and 
strength.  But  even  while  he  was  in  Germany, 
Wordsworth's  heart  was  in  England;  and  it  was 
to  English  scenes  and  home  recollections  that  his 
poems  of  this  period  refer;  except  one  lamentably 
heavy  attempt  at  being  funny.  'Nutting,'  well 
worthy  of  being  considered  a  pendant  to  'Tintem 
Abbey,'  the  two  noble  poems  afterwards  incorporated 
with  the  Prelude,  'Wisdom  and  Spirit  of  the 
Universe,'  and  '  There  was  a  boy,  ye  knew  him  well, 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  155 

ye  cliffs,' — the  stanzas  to  Lucy,  '  She  dwelt  amid 
the  untrodden  ways/  so  tender  and  graceful,  sad, 
holy,  and  beautiful  as  a  Madonna, — those  others, 
'  Three  years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shower,'  the  most 
exquisite  description  ever  written  of  an  English 
country  girl,  half  child,  half  woman,  with  the  wildness 
and  witchery  of  a  sylphide,  the  grace  of  a  duchess, 
and  the  purity  of  an  angel, — the  poet's  Epitaph, 
containing  those  lines,  so  often  applied  to  himself, — 

He  is  retired  as  noon-tide  dew, 
Or  fountain  in  a  noon- day  grove ; 
And  you  must  love  him,  ere  to  you 
He  will  seem  worthy  of  your  love ; — 

these  and  others  of  his  poems  less  popular,  he  com- 
posed during  that  winter  at  Goslar,  the  severest,  it 
is  said,  of  the  whole  century.  But  they  might  have 
heen  composed  just  as  well  anywhere  else;  and 
neither  in  the  records  of  this  winter,  nor  in  the  poems 
themselves,  nor  in  any  after  results,  is  the  influence 
of  this  Goslar  residence  apparent.  It  was  as  he  left 
Goslar,  that  'he  poured  forth  the  impassioned  strain 
which  forms  the  commencement  of  the  Prelude.^ 
This  was  on  the  10th  February,  1799 ;  and  of  the 
fourteen  books,  six  only  had  been  written  in  1805, 
and  the  seventh  begun  in  the  spring  of  that  year 
opens  thus : 


156  :essats. 

Six  changeful  years  liave  vanished,  since  I  first 
Poured  out  (saluted  by  that  quickening  breeze 
Which  met  me  issuing  from  the  city's  ■walls) 
A  glad  preamble  to  this  verse. 

He  writes  to  Cottle  on  his  return,  '  We  have  spent 
our  time  pleasantly  enough  in  Germany,  but  we  are 
right  glad  to  find  ourselves  in  England,  for  we  have 
learnt  to  know  its  value.' 

Wordsworth  had  now  reached  his  thirtieth  year, 
when  his  training  may  be  presumed  complete.  His 
tastes,  his  pursuits,  and  his  character,  were  fully  de- 
termined, and  the  remainder  of  his  life,  extending 
over  a  space  of  fifty  years,  was  but  the  progressive 
manifestation  of  the  powers  cultivated,  and  the  prin- 
ciples formed,  during  the  stages  of  which  we  have 
been  hitherto  speaking.  In  the  latter  part  of  1799 
he  took  up  his  residence  with  his  sister,  in  a  cottage 
at  Grasmere;  and  here,  or  at  a  house  called  Allan 
Bank,  and  subsequently  at  Rydal  Mount,  he  passed 
his  long,  peaceful,  and  happy  existence  in  a  round 
of  domestic  charities  and  poetic  activity. 

The  following  extracts  from  Miss  Wordsworth's 
journal  we  quote,  as  the  best  account  we  can  give 
of  the  daily  life  of  the  writer  and  her  brother: — 

Wednesday/,  April  28. — Copied  the  Prioress"  Tale.  W.  in  the 
orchard — ^tired.  I  happened  to  say  that  when  a  child  I  would  not 
have  pulled  a  strawberry  blossom:    left  him,   and  wrote   out  the 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  157 

Manciples  tale.  At  dinner  he  came  in  with  the  poem  on  children 
gathering  flowers.* 

April  30. — "We  went  into  the  orchard  after  breakfast,  and  sat 
there.    The  lake  calm,  sky  cloudy.    W.  began  poem  on  the  Celandine. 

May  1. — Sowed  flower  seeds :  W.  helped  me.  We  sat  in  the 
orchard .  W.  wrote  the  Celadine.  Planned  an  arbour :  the  sun  too 
hot  for  us. 

May  7. — W.  wrote  the  Leech-Gatherer. 

May  21. — W.  wrote  two  sonnets  on  Buonaparte,  after  I  had  read 
Milton's  Sonnets  to  him. 

May  29. — "W.  wrote  his  Poem  on  going  to  M.  H.     I  wrote  it  out. 

June  8. — W.  wrote  the  poem  '  The  sun  has  long  been  set.^ 

June  17. — W.  added  to  the  Odef  he  is  writing. 

June  19. — Read  Churchill's  Mosciad. 

July  9. — ^W.  and  I  set  forth  to  Keswick  on  our  road  to  Gallow 

Hill  (to  the  Hutchinsons,  near  Malton,  York).     On  Monday,  11th, 

went  to  Eusemere  (the  Clarksons).        13th,  walked  to  Emont  Bridge, 

thence  by  Greta  Bridge.      The  sun  shone  cheerfully,  and  a  glorious 

ride  we  had  over  the  moors ;    every  building   bathed   in  golden 

light :  we  saw  round  us  miles  beyond  miles,  Darlington  spire,  &c. 

Thence  to  Thirsk ;  on  foot  to  the  Hamilton  Hills — Rivaux.      I  went 

down  to  look  at  the  ruins:  thrushes  singing,  cattle  feeding  among 

the  ruins   of  the  Abbey ;   green  hillocks  about  the  ruins ;    these 

hillocks  scattered   over  with  grovelets  of  wild  roses,   and  covered 

with  wild  flowers.     I  could  have  stayed  in  this  solemn  quiet  spot 

tiU  evening  without  a  thought  of  moving,  but  "W.  was  waiting  for 

mc. 

*  «  *  #  « 

Jtdy  30. — Left  London  between  five  and  six  o'clock  of  the 
morning  outside  the  Dover  coach.  A  beautiful  morning.  The  city, 
St.  Paul's,  with  the  river — a  multitude  of  little  boats,  made  a 
beautiful  sight  as  we  crossed  Westminster  Bridge ;%  the  houses  not 

•  The  Poem  entitled  'Foresight,'  vol.  i.  p.  149. 

f  '  On  Intimations  of  Immortality  from  Recollections  of  Child- 
hood,' vol.  V.  p.  148. 

X  The  Sonnet  on  Westminster  Bridge  was  then  written  on  the  roof 
of  the  Dover  coach  (vol.  ii.  p.  296). 


158  ASSAYS. 

overhung  by  their  clouds  of  smoke,  and  were  spread  out  endlessly ; 
yet  the  sun  shone  so  brightly,  with  such  a  pure  light,  that  there 
was  something  like  the  purity  of  one  of  Nature's  own  grand  spec- 
tacles. . .  .Arrived  at  Calais  at  four  in  the  morning  of  July  31st. 

Delightful  walks  in  the  evenings :  seeing  far  off  in  the  west  the 
coast  of  England,  like  a  cloud,  crested  with  Dover  Castle,  the 
evening  star,  and  the  glory  of  the  sky :  the  reflections  in  the 
water  were  more  beautiful  than  the  sky  itself;  purple  waves  brighter 
than  precious  stones  for  ever  melting  away  upon  the  sands. 
*  *  *  *  ♦  * 

On  Monday,  Oct.  4,  1802,  W.  was  married  at  Brompton  Church, 

to  Mary  Hutchinson We  arrived  at  Grasmere  at  six  in  the 

evening  on  Oct.  6,  1802. 

Mary  Hutchinson  was  Wordsworth's  cousin,  and 
they  had  been  intimate  from  childhood,  having  been 
at  the  same  dame's  school  together,  whenever  the 
poet,  during  his  earliest  years,  was  on  a  visit  to  his 
maternal  relations  at  Penrith.  How  calm  and  beau- 
tiful their  wedded  life  was;  how  fall  of  mutual  sup- 
port and  happiness ;  how  rich  in  thoughtful  affection, 
esteem,  and  purifying  influence,  may  be  traced  in  the 
poems  with  which  Mrs.  Wordsworth's  name  will  ever 
be  more  directly  associated,  forming  a  series  to  which 
the  sameness  of  subject,  and  the  progressive  develop- 
ment of  feeling,  give  a  unity  which  shapes  them  into 
an  organic  whole,  one  sweet  and  holy  poem  of  wedded 
love,  reflecting  the  vicissitudes  of  earthly  life,  as  the 
mountain-circled  lake  reflects  the  changing  face  of  an 
April  sky,  bright  or  overcast,  as  clouds  or  sunshine 
prevail  above ;  but  whether  in  brightness  or  in  gloom, 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  159 

calm  in  its  still  depths,  however  the  breeze  may  ruflOie 
and  perplex  the  mirror  of  its  surface. 

We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  de  Quincey  for  portraits 
of  Wordsworth  and  his  wife,  which,  in  the  absence 
of  anything  of  the  sort  in  Dr.  Christopher  Words- 
worth's volumes,  we  will  take  the  liberty  to  present 
in  an  abridged  form  j  though  whatever  Mr.  de 
Quincey  writes  is  so  admirable,  that  no  abridgment 
can  fail  to  do  it  injustice.  He  describes  Mrs.  Words- 
worth, a  few  years  after  her  marriage,  as  a  tall 
young  woman,  with  the  most  winning  expression  of 
benignity  upon  her  features  that  he  had  ever  beheld, 
and  with  such  a  frank  air,  and  native  goodness  of 
manner,  as  at  once  to  put  a  stranger  at  his  ease  with 
her.  Her  figure  was  good,  though  rather  slender; 
her  complexion  fair,  and  blooming  with  an  animated 
expression  of  health.  Her  eyes,  as  her  husband 
paints  her. 

Like  stars  of  twiliglit  fair; 
Like  twilight!,  too,  her  dusky  hair; 
But  all  things  else  about  her  drawn 
From  May-time  and  the  cheerful  dawn. 

Mr.  de  Quincey  adds  to  this  portrait  that,  in  these 
eyes  of  vesper  gentleness,  there  was  more  than  that 
slight  obliquity  of  vision  which  is  often  supposed 
to  be  an  attractive  foible  of  the  countenance;   and 


160  USSATS. 

yet,  though  it  ought  to  have  been  displeasing  or 
repulsive,  in  fact  it  was  not.  'Indeed,  all  faults, 
had  they  been  ten  times  more  and  greater,  would 
have  been  swallowed  up,  or  neutralized,  by  that 
supreme  expression  of  her  features,  to  the  intense 
unity  of  which  every  lineament  in  the  fixed  parts, 
and  every  undulation  in  the  moving  parts,  or  play  of 
her  countenance,  concurred — viz.,  a  sunny  benignity, 
a  radiant  gracefulness,  such  as  in  this  world  I  never 
saw  equalled  or  approached.'  He  tells  us  that, 
^though  generally  pronounced  very  plain,  she  ex- 
ercised all  the  practical  power  and  fascination  of 
beauty,  through  the  mere  compensating  charms  of 
sweetness  all  but  angelic;  of  simplicity  the  most 
entire;  womanly  self-respect,  and  purity  of  heart 
speaking  through  all  her  looks,  acts,  and  movements.' 
She  talked  so  little,  that  Clarkson  used  to  say  of  her, 
that  she  could  only  say,  '  God  bless  you !' 

A  masterly  portrait  is  completed  by  a  description 
of  the  intellectual  character  as  not  being  of  an  active 
order ;  though,  '  in  a  quiescent,  reposing,  medita- 
tive way,  she  appeared  always  to  have  a  genial 
enjoyment  from  her  own  thoughts.'  The  acknow- 
ledged pique  which  colours  all  Mr.  de  Quincey's 
picture  of  the  Wordsworths  may  have  had  something 
to  do  with  this  last  touch.      Our  readers  will  scarcely 


WORBSWORTE'S  FOEMS.  161 

be  disposed  to  agree  with  anj  depreciation  of  that 
woman's  intellect  who  wrote  the  two  most  beau- 
tiful and  thoughtful  lines  in  one  of  Wordsworth's 
most  charming  minor  poems.  It  is  to  Mrs.  Words- 
worth that  the  poem  called  'Daffodils'  owes  the 
lines — 

They  flash  upon  that  inward  eye, 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude. 

Such  was  the  woman  who  for  nearly  fifty  years 
shared  the  home  and  heart  of  the  poet  with  the 
beloved  sister.  And  what  was  he  like  himself? 
Let  us  take  a  crayon  sketch  from  the  full-length 
carefully  coloured  portrait,  by  the  same  skilful  hand. 
He  was  five  feet  ten  inches  in  height,  and  of 
moderate  stoutness,  but  his  legs  were  bad,  and  his 
bust  worse,  from  a  narrowness  of  chest,  and  a  droop 
about  the  shoulders.  These  defects  of  figure  were 
more  conspicuous  when  he  was  in  motion,  and  were 
increased  by  a  habit  he  had  of  walking  with  his 
arm  in  his  unbuttoned  waistcoat,  which  caused  him 
to  advance  with  a  twisting  motion,  so  that  he  would 
gi-adually  edge  ofi"  any  one  he  was  with,  from  the 
middle  to  the  side  of  the  road,  and  the  country 
people  used  to  say  he  walked  'like  a  cade,'  some 
sort  of  insect  with  an  oblique  motion.  He  had 
originally  a   fine   sombre   complexion,   like   that  of 

M 


162  JSSSATS. 

a  Venetian  senator,  or  a  Spanish  monk ;  but  constant 
exposure  to  weather  soon  spoilt  his  tint,  and  gave 
a  coarse  texture  to  his  face,  and  grizzled  hair  came 
early  to  displace  the  original  brown.  His  counte- 
nance, however,  made  amends  for  figure  and  com- 
plexion ;  '  it  was,'  says  the  artist  we  are  copying, 
*  the  noblest  for  intellectual  effects  that  I  have  ever 
been  led  to  notice.'  It  had  the  character  of  a  portrait 
of  Titian,  or  Vandyke,  of  the  great  age  of  Elizabeth 
and  the  Stuarts.  Haydon  has  painted  Wordsworth 
as  a  disciple,  in  his  picture  of  '  Christ's  Entry  into 
Jerusalem.'  The  head  was  well  filled  out ;  the 
forehead  not  very  lofty,  but  remarkable  for  its 
breadth  and  expansive  development.  The  eyes 
were  rather  small,  and  never  lustrous  or  piercing, 
but  at  times,  especially  after  long  walks,  '  assumed 
an  appearance  the  most  solemn  and  spiritual  that 
it  is  possible  for  the  human  eye  to  wear.'  The 
light  that  resided  in  them,  though  never  superficial, 
seemed  at  times  '  to  come  from  depths  below  all 
depths,'  *  the  light  that  never  was  on  land  or  sea.' 
The  nose  was  a  little  arched  and  large.  But  the  most 
marked  feature  in  the  whole  face  was  the  mouth ; 
the  swell  and  protrusion  of  the  parts  above  and 
around  it  were  not  only  noticeable  in  themselves,  but 
gave  the  face  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  portrait 


WORBSWOBTR-S  POEMS.  163 

of  Milton,  engraved  in  Richardson  tlie  painter's 
notes  on  Paradise  Lost,  which  was  the  only  one 
acknowledged  by  Milton's  last  surviving  daughter 
to  be  a  strong  likeness  of  her  father.  Every 
member  of  Wordsworth's  family  was  as  much  im- 
pressed as  Mr.  de  Quincey  with  the  striking  re- 
semblance. The  points  of  difference  were,  that 
Milton's  face  was  shorter  and  broader,  and  his  eyes 
larger.  The  only  portrait  of  Wordsworth  which 
Mr.  de  Quincey  thinks  is  to  be  at  all  compared  for 
likeness  with  this  Richardson-portrait  of  Milton,  is 
that  by  Carruthers,  with  one  of  the  Rydal  water- 
falls for  a  background.  The  objection  to  the  later 
portraits  is,  that  Wordsworth,  from  the  fervour  of 
his  temperament,  and  the  self-consuming  energy 
of  his  brain,  prematurely  displayed  the  appearance 
of  age. 

We  make  no  apology  for  the  length  to  which  these 
descriptions  have  run ;  rather,  we  heartily  recommend 
our  readers  to  study  the  originals,  not  less  for 
Wordsworth's  sake,  than  as  admirable  specimens  of 
one  of  the  greatest  prose  writers  whom  our  century 
has  produced.  They  will  be  found  in  Tait^s  Maga- 
zine^ among  the  '  Lake  Reminiscences,'  by  the  English 
Opium-Eater. 

In  the  year  1800,  an  edition  of  the  Lyrical 
m2 


164  us  SAYS. 

Ballads,  with  an  additional  volume,  and  the  famous 
Preface,  had  been  published.  Fresh  editions  were 
called  for  in  the  years  1802  and  1805,  proof  sufficient 
that  the  fit  audience  was  already  gathering  strength, 
and  that  the  reviewers  were  not  the  public.  Still 
the  returns  scarcely  did  more  than  pay  the  expence 
of  publication.  This,  however,  was  now  of  less  im- 
portance. In  1802,  on  the  death  of  the  first  Lord 
Lonsdale,  his  successor  had  paid  the  debt  due  to 
Wordsworth's  family  with  interest,  and  the  sum  that 
fell  to  each  member  was  about  £1800.  Mr.  de 
Quincey,  with  something  of  good-humoured  banter, 
and  a  half-serious  latent  reference  to  his  own  different 
fate,  speaks  of  Wordsworth,  in  reference  to  pecuniary 
matters,  as  the  most  fortunate  man  in  existence ;  and 
tells  us  that  a  regular  succession  of  god-sends  fell 
in  to  sustain  his  expenditure  with  the  growing  claims 
upon  his  purse.  We  have  mentioned  the  legacy 
from  Raisley  Calvert,  which  saved  him  from  news- 
paper writing,  and  (though  his  nephew  seems  to 
know  nothing  about  it)  from  the  equally  unsuitable 
employment  of  taking  pupils.  Next  came  Lord 
Lonsdale's  repayment,  which  enabled  him  to  marry ; 
for  with  his  simple  habits,  what  would  have  been 
poverty  to  most  men  of  education,  was  a  competence 
for  him.     Miss  Hutchinson  brought  him  some  fortune, 


WOUSSTFOBTS'S  POEMS.  165 

which  was  afterwards  increased  by  a  legacy  from  an 
uncle,  expressed  in  thousands  of  pounds.  In  1813, 
just  as  his  family  were  becoming  expensive,  he  was 
made  stamp-distributor  for  Westmoreland,  with  an 
income  of  above  £500.  per  annum — not  to  mention 
the  subsequent  addition  to  this  source  of  income 
from  the  increase  of  his  district,  which  Mr.  de  Quincey 
estimates  at  £400.  more;  and  finally  (since  Mr.  de 
Quincey  wrote),  on  resigning  this  office  in  1842,  it 
was  bestowed  upon  his  younger  son,  and  he  was  him- 
self put  down  upon  the  civil  list  for  £300.  a-year,  and, 
to  crown  all,  made  Poet  Laureate ;  *  so  that,  by  a 
singular  felicity,  this  man,  unpossessed  of  any  market- 
able talent,  was  enabled,  from  the  age  of  three-and- 
twenty,  to  devote  himself,  without  care  or  anxiety 
for  the  future,  to  the  cultivation  of  his  genius,  and 
was  secured  in  that  free  enjoyment  of  nature  and 
domestic  happiness,  which  was  an  essential  condition 
of  his  poetic  activity.  To  Raisley  Calvert,  who 
laid  the  first  stone,  and  to  Lord  Lonsdale,  who  fiirst. 


*  Dr.  "Wordsworth  is  not  quite  correct  in  leading  his  readers  to 
suppose  that  his  iincle's  laureateship  was  a  complete  sinecure.  On 
Prince  Alhert's  installation  as  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Cam- 
hridge,  he  wrote  the  words  of  the  Ode,  which  was  composed  hy  the 
popular  and  accomplished  professor  of  music,  Dr.  "Walmisley,  and 
performed  in  the  Senate  House. 


166  :essays. 

by  a  prompt  and  liberal  act  of  justice,  and  after- 
wai'ds,  by  a  kind  and  discerning  act  of  patronage, 
built  upon  this  foundation  the  solid  edifice  of  the 
poet's  prosperity,  be  all  honour  paid.  The  name 
and  virtues  of  both  are  embalmed  for  immortality 
in  those  pages,  which  owe  so  much  to  the  leisure 
their  liberality  and  discernment  fortified;  but  England 
owes  them  a  debt  of  gratitude,  which  she  will  pay, 
in  proportion  as  her  people  feel  'what  a  glorious 
gift  God  bestows  on  a  nation  when  he  gives  them 
a  poet.'*  It  would  be  unfair  to  Sir  George  Beau- 
mont not  to  associate  his  name  with  Wordsworth's 
benefactors.  Before  he  had  seen  Wordsworth, 
solely  from  the  impression  made  upon  him  by  his 
writings,  he,  in  1803,  purchased  a  beautiful  spot 
at  Applethwaite,  near  Keswick,  and  presented  it 
to  the  poet,  in  order  that  he  and  Coleridge,  who 
was  then  residing  at  Greta  Hall,  might  be  per- 
manent neighbours.  Coleridge's  failure  of  health 
compelled  him  to  leave  England,  and  the  plan  was 
never  carried  out;  but  the  friendship  that  sprang 
from  this  beginning,  ripened  into  a  close  intimacy 
and    a  frequent   interchange   of  letters    and   visits. 


*  Dedication  of  second  edition   of    Guesses    at    Truth   to   W. 
"Wordsworth. 


WORBSWORTE'S  FOMfS.  167 

Some  of  the  happiest  efforts  of  the  titled  painter 
are  illustrations  of  the  poems  of  his  friend;  and 
in  many  of  those  poems  their  names  will  go  down 
to  posterity,  linked  together  by  the  purest  ties  of 
friendship  and  mutual  admiration.  Sir  George  died 
in  1827,  and  bequeathed  to  Mr.  Wordsworth  an 
annuity  of  £100.  to  defray  the  expenses  of  an  annual 
tour.  There  had  been  a  period  in  Wordsworth's 
life,  when  fear  of  poverty  and  distress  had  clouded 
his  prospects.  Mr.  de  Quincey  informs  us,  on  Miss 
Wordsworth's  authority,  that  her  brother  at  one 
time  became  subject  to  a  nervous  affection  to  such 
an  extent,  that  his  friends,  as  a  means  of  beguiling 
his  distress,  played  cards  with  him  every  night. 

Again  we  say,  honour  and  gratitude  to  Raisley 
Calvert  and  Lord  Lonsdale,  and  the  few  men  who, 
like  Sir  George  Beaumont,  cheered  and  supported 
the  poet  in  his  struggle  with  hostile  criticism  and 
public  apathy.  To  these  three  men  his  works 
and  his  correspondence  bear  ample  testimony.  We 
cannot,  however,  in  justice,  avoid  a  passing  allusion 
to  the  absence  of  any  acknowledgment,  or  of  even 
any  feeling  of  thankfulness,  for  sympathy  of  a  less 
substantial  but  no  less  necessary  kind,  from  those  few 
men  of  letters  who  early  discerned  and  eSipressed 
their    sense    of   Wordsworth's    profoundly   original 


168  ASSAYS. 

genius.  If  tlie  poet's  own  extreme  dislike  of  writing 
prevented  such  acknowledgments  in  the  shape  in 
which  they  form  so  pleasing  a  portion  of  the  bio- 
graphies of  other  poets,  at  least  we  should  like  to 
have  had  some  record  of  spoken  feelings,  which  would 
have  shown  that  the  homage  of  such  men  as  Wilson 
and  De  Quincey,  and  later  in  his  career,  of  Thomas 
Arnold,  of  Julius  Hare,  and  of  Henry  Taylor,  was 
not  paid  to  an  idol  of  stone.  The  biographer's  want 
of  sympathy  with  any  form  of  goodness  or  talent 
which  does  not  run  submissively  within  the  channels 
of  Church-of-England  orthodoxy  according  to  the 
Westminster  Canon,  may  partly  account  for  this. 
Still  something  of  it  must,  we  fear,  be  attributed  to 
a  hardness  in  Wordsworth's  nature  towards  the 
human  world  outside  his  own  family  circle,  to  an 
independence  of  the  sympathy  of  men,  which  was 
indeed  a  means  of  preserving  him  from  much  dis- 
comfort and  annoyance,  assailed  and  ridiculed  as  he 
was,  but  which,  at  the  same  time,  was  grievously 
discouraging  to  such  worshippers  as  felt  the  worth 
of  their  worship,  and  required  some  return  of  affection, 
sympathy,  and  esteem.  With  men  of  letters  es- 
pecially, the  'limitation  of  his  literary  sensibilities' 
prevented  him  from  forming,  or  at  least  sustaining, 
a  mutual  friendship.      Even   to  Coleridge,  who   so 


WORBSWORTE'S  FOEMS.  169 

dearly  loved  him,  who  so  generously  and  so  ably 
vindicated  his  claims  to  be  called  a  great  poet,  whose 
profound  and  elaborate  criticism  in  the  Biographia 
Literaria  remains  to  this  day  the  most  satisfactory 
defence  and  the  best  exposition  of  his  friend's  poetry, 
how  small  the  return  of  affectionate,  admiring  appre- 
ciation— how  dim  and  faint  the  sympathy  during  all 
that  period  of  Coleridge's  life,  when  clouds  and 
darkness  beset  his  path,  and  he  was  walking  through 
the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death !  The  fact  is,  he 
did  not  value  all  this  sympathy,  because  he  did  not 
need  it.  He  could  never  have  written  to  Coleridge 
as  Coleridge  wrote  to  him  in  Germany — 

"William,  my  head  and  my  heart!  dear  "WiUiam  and  dear  Dorothea! 
You  have  all  in  each  other ;   hut  I  am  lonely,  and  want  you  ! 

This  last  line,  too,  gives  a  more  amiable  reason 
for  Wordsworth's  indifference  to  his  friends  and 
admirers.      His  heart  was  wrapped  up  in  his  wife     7 


and  sister,  and  afterwards  in  his  children,  especially     »  H 
in  her  who  recalled  his  sister's  childhood — his  beloved      y     a 
Dora.     The  name  recalls  us  from  our  discursion  ^''f/jji 


speak  of  one  in  whom  so  much  of  the  poet's  deepest^^^-'VU^**^ 
fondest    affection   was    centered,   and    to  whom   his 
biographer    has    paid    the    honour    of  joining   her 
portrait  with    her  father's    as    the   frontispieces   to 


170  ASSAYS. 

his  two  volumes.  Wordsworth  had  in  all  five 
children : — 

John,  bom  18th  June,  1803. 

Dorothy,  called  and  generally  known  as  Dora, 
born  16th  August,  1804. 

Thomas,  bom  16  June,  1806. 

Catharine,  bom  6th  Sept.  1808. 

William,  bom  12th  May,  1810. 

Of  these,  Thomas  and  Catharine  died  in  early 
childhood;  John  and  William  survive  their  father; 
the  former  is  a  clergyman,  the  latter  succeeded  upon 
his  father's  resignation  to  the  distributorship  of 
stamps.  Nothing  remarkable  is  recorded  of  any  of 
the  four  by  Dr.  Christopher  Wordsworth;  but  to 
those  for  whom  curious  psychological  facts  have 
interest,  the  name  of  Catharine  Wordsworth  (who 
died  before  she  was  four  years  old;  'loving  she  is, 
and  tractable,  though  wild,'  is  addressed  to  her)  will 
always  be  memorable  as  the  cause  and  object  of 
that  strange  nympholepsy,  the  agonies  of  which  Mr. 
de  Quincey  has  so  graphically  and  powerfully  de- 
scribed in  those  Lake  Reminiscences,  to  which  the 
absence  of  what  is  interesting  or  characteristic  in  the 
volumes  we  are  reviewing  has  led  us  so  often  to  refer. 
Dora  Wordsworth  will  always  form  a  conspicuous 
object  in  any  artistically  conceived  biography  of  her 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  171 

father.      When  she  was  a  month  old,  he  addressed 
to  her  that  thoughtful  poem,  heginning, — 

Hast  thou,  then,  surrived. 
Mild  offspring  of  infirm  humanity  ? 

Not  many  weeks  after,  she  inspired  that  most 
exquisite  of  all  her  father's  sportive  compositions, 
'  The  Kitten  and  the  Falling  Leaves.'  To  her  is 
addressed  '  The  Longest  Day ;'  and  when,  threatened 
with  blindness,  he  anticipates  the  time  that  he  should 
need  a  guiding  hand,  it  is  to  his  *  own  Dora,  his 
beloved  child,'  that  he  would,  like  another  (Edipus, 
entrust  his  dark  steps.  And  who  can  forget  that 
later  group,  in  which  the  noblest  art,  warmed  by 
pure  affection,  has  blended  together  in  indissoluble 
beauty,  Dora  Wordsworth,  Edith  Southey,  and  Sara 
Coleridge?  She  married  at  a  mature  age  Edward 
Quillinan,  Esq.,*  to  whose  children,  left  to  her 
charge  by  a  beloved  friend,  she  had  performed  the 
duties  of  a  mother.  But  her  health  rapidly  failed,  and 
after  an  unavailing  journey  to  Portugal,  of  which 
she  has  left  a  published  record  that  proves  her  to 
have  inherited  no  little  of  the  genius  of  her  father 


*  "We  regret  to  be  compelled  to  add  that,  since  this  article  ■was 
written,  the  newspapers  have  announced  the  death  of  this  gentleman, 
himself  the  author  of  works  which  prove  him  to  have  been  worthy  of 
his  charming  and  gifted  wife. 


172  ASSAYS. 

and  her  aunt,  she  died  of  consumption  in  July  1847, 
ahout  three  years  hefore  her  father.  From  the 
poems  addressed  to  her,  and  those  previously  alluded 
to,  referring  to  Mrs.  Wordsworth,  with  the  scattered 
allusions  throughout  his  works  to  his  sister,  the 
reader  may  have  insight  into  Wordsworth's  life,  so 
far  as  women  influenced  either  his  happiness  or  the 
development  of  his  genius.  His  '  Lucy'  poems, 
which  seem  to  allude  to  some  early  love  prematurely 
removed,  either  belong  to  the  region  of  pure  ima- 
gination, or  all  records  of  the  fact  have  been  ob- 
literated. But  the  sister,  the  wife,  and  the  daughter 
remain  for  us  as  prominent  portraits,  scarcely  ideal- 
ized by  the  poet's  pencil,  as  fellow-workers  co-oper- 
ating in  the  production  of  the  poems,  and  above  all, 
as  personal  powers,  sustaining,  nourishing,  purifying, 
and  invigorating  the  poetic  temperament  by  the 
sweet  and  holy  influences  of  affection,  and  the  quiet, 
unobtrusive  action  of  the  domestic  charities.  The 
history  of  literature  furnishes  no  group  upon  which 
the  heart  can  rest  more  delighted  and  satisfied. 

We  have  noticed  Wordsworth's  successive  pub- 
lications up  to  1805.  In  1807  appeared  two  volumes 
of  Miscellaneous  Poems,  which  drew  down  upon 
him  the  wrath  and  ridicule  of  Mr.  Jeffrey.  The 
great  oracle   of  the  North    had   before    this  given 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  173 

vent  to  sundry  manifestations  of  indignant  contempt, 
but  our  poet  had  hitherto  stood  the  brunt  of  the 
critic's  charge,  in  company  with  Southey,  Lamb, 
and  the  rest  of  the  so-called  Lakers.  But  now 
on  his  single  head  was  discharged  the  pitiless  pelting 
of  the  storm ;  and  while  the  majority  of  the  world 
were  shaking  with  laughter,  and  a  few  trembling 
with  indignation,  the  unhappy  victim  himself  main- 
tained an  unbroken  serenity,  and  held  on  his  way 
with  cheerful  heart  and  hope  unabated.  God  has 
given  to  some  men  love,  humility,  and  genuine  ap- 
preciation of  the  beautiful  and  the  good  in  nature 
and  in  art ;  to  others,  the  gift  of  saying  witty  things 
and  being  ill-natured.  What  could  such  a  critic, 
with  all  his  brilliant  faculties,  permanently  effect 
against  a  man  who  writes  with  the  views  and  ex- 
pectations expressed  in  the  following  passage  from 
a  letter,  dated  1807,  to  Lady  Beaumont : — 

At  present  let  me  confine  myself  to  my  object,  wliich  is  to  make 
you,  my  dear  friend,  as  easy-hearted  as  myself  with  respect  to  these 
poems.  Trouble  not  yourself  upon  their  present  reception ;  of  what 
moment  is  that  compared  with  what  I  trust  is  their  destiny  ? — to 
console  the  afflicted ;  to  add  sunshine  to  daylight,  by  making  the 
happy  happier ;  to  teach  the  young  and  the  gracious  of  every  age  to 
Bee,  to  think,  and  feel,  and,  therefore,  to  become  more  actively 
and  securely  virtuous ;  this  is  their  office,  which  I  trust  they  will 
faithfully  perform,  long  after  we  (that  is,  all  that  is  mortal  of  us)  are 
mouldered  in  our  graves. 


174  ASSAYS. 

Still,  the  critic  did  something:  he  supplied  wit- 
lings with  epigrammatic  bon-honSj  caused  the  poems 
to  be  an  unremunerative  article  of  commerce,  and 
retarded  the  nation  in  their  general  acknowledgment 
of  a  great  poet;  and  they  now  stand  side  by  side, 
critic  and  poet,  and  the  age  has  already  approximated 
to  a  just  appreciation  of  each.  Again,  on  the  pub- 
lication of  the  *  Excursion,'  in  1814,  the  same  hand 
shot  another  and  a  more  sulphurous  bolt;  he  even 
boasted,  in  his  self-complacent  blindness,  that  he  had 
crushed  the  '  Excursion.'  He  crush  the  '  Excursion'!' 
cried  Southey;  'tell  him  he  might  as  well  hope  to 
crush  Skiddaw!'  But  this  time,  whether  from  mere 
opposition,  or  from  a  gleam  of  genuine  insight,  the 
Quarterly/  Review — established,  a  few  years  pre- 
viously, as  a  counterblast  to  the  great  Whig  Bellows 
— issued  a  mild  whiff  of  qualified  approval.  This, 
however,  was  going  too  far;  and  next  year,  in  a 
notice  of  the  *  White  Doe  of  Rylstone,'  '  Wordsworth 
stood  at  the  bar  of  the  Tory  journal,  arraigned  and 
convicted  of  poetical  heterodoxy  and  literary  felo-de- 
se.'  Nor — in  spite  of  Southey 's  intimate  connexion 
with  the  Quarterly^  and  his  invaluable  assistance  to 
it — was  the  verdict  reversed  till,  in  1834,  the  author 
of  Philip  Van  Artevelde  contributed  to  its  pages  the 
ablest   estimate   and  the  fullest  acknowledgment   of 


WOMBSWOETE'S  POEMS.  175 

Wordsworth's  genius  and  poetry  that  has  appeared 
since  the  publication  of  the  BiograjpMa  Literaria. 
That  still  remains,  and  is  likely,  we  fear,  long  to 
remain,  unapproached  and  unapproachable,  as  a 
specimen  of  philosophical  criticism,  and  a  generous 
testimony  of  personal  admiration. 

Instructive  as  are  these  facts,  as  warnings  against 
putting  faith  in  critics,  and  against  that  self-conceit 
and  laziness  which  presume  to  judge  a  writer  who 
gives  ample  proof  of  original  genius,  without  an 
attempt  to  submit  to  his  influence,  or  to  seize  his 
point  of  view,  and  so  feel  with  his  feelings  and  see 
with  his  eyes,  we  should  not  think  them  worth 
mentioning  here,  but  for  the  serene  equanimity  with 
which  Wordsworth  endured,  not  only  the  lash  of  his 
critics,  but,  what  is  far  more  galling,  the  neglect  of 
the  world  of  letters.  'Let  the  age,'  he  writes  to 
Southey,  '  continue  to  love  its  own  darkness ;  I  shall 
continue  to  write  with,  I  trust,  the  light  of  Heaven 
upon  me.'  With  more  epigrammatic  point  than  is 
usual  with  him,  he  says  of  one  of  his  principal 
assailants,  'he  has  taken  a  pei-petual  retainer  from 
his  own  incapacity  to  plead  against  my  claims  to 
public  approbation.'  So  again,  in  writing  to  Bernard 
Barton :  '  It  pleases,  though  it  does  not  surprise  me, 
to  leam  that,  having  been  affected  early  in  life  by 


176  assATS. 

my  verses,  jou  have  returned  again  to  your  old  loves, 
after  some  little  infidelities,  which  you  were  shamed 
into  by  commerce  with  the  scribbling  and  chattering 
part  of  the  world.  I  have  heard  of  many  who,  upon 
their  first  acquaintance  with  my  poetry,  have  had 
much  to  get  over  before  they  could  thoroughly  relish 
it;  but  never  of  one  who,  having  once  learned  to 
enjoy  it,  had  ceased  to  value  it,  or  survived  his 
admiration.  This  is  as  good  an  external  assurance 
as  I  can  desire,  that  my  inspiration  is  from  a  pure 
source,  and  that  my  principles  of  composition  are 
trustworthy.' 

It  was  this  rooted  conviction  of  the  genuineness 
of  his  inspiration  and  the  truth  of  his  principles, 
combined  with  a  deep  sense  that  the  question  involved 
was  not  a  merely  personal  one  to  himself,  but  con- 
cerned the  best  interests  of  humanity,  that  sustained 
his  patience  and  cheerfulness.  But  subordinate  to 
this  moral  cause,  we  have  no  doubt  that  his  active 
habits  and  out-of-door  life  materially  aided  this  effect. 
^Nine-tenths  of  my  verses,'  he  says,  'have  been 
murmured  in  the  open  air.'  *  There,'  said  his  servant 
to  some  strangers,  who  were  being  shown  over 
Rydal  Mount,  'is  my  master's  library,  wliere  he 
keeps  his  books,  but  his  study  is  out  of  doors.' 
And  on  his  return  after  a  long  absence  from  home, 


WORBSWOETE' S  FOEMS.  177 

liis  cottage  neighbours  have  been  heard  to  say, 
*  Well,  there  he  is ;  we  are  glad  to  hear  him  hooing 
about  again.'  His  pedestrian  tours  have  been  already 
mentioned ;  and,  indeed,  his  tours  seem  to  have  been 
most  of  them  mainly  pedestrian ;  it  is  not  jfrom 
carriage  windows  that  such  impressions  as  form  the 
stuff  of  his  numerous  poetic  memorials  of  his  journeys 
to  Scotland  and  elsewhere  are  received.  How  much 
his  happiness  was  subserved  by  this  habit,  may  be 
judged  from  an  anecdote,  showing  the  extreme 
irritability  of  his  constitution,  which  was  further 
manifested  in  frequently  recurring  attacks  of  inflam- 
mation of  the  eyes.  He  received  a  wound  in  his  foot 
while  walking  about  composing  the  'White  Doe,' 
and  though  he  desisted  from  walking,  he  found  the 
irritation  of  the  wounded  part  was  kept  up  by  the  act 
of  composition.  Upon  taking  a  mental  holiday,  a 
rapid  cure  was  the  consequence.  He  adds,  'Poetic 
excitement,  when  accompanied  by  protracted  labour 
in  composition,  has  throughout  my  life  brought  on 
more  or  less  bodily  derangement.  Nevertheless,  I 
am,  at  the  close  of  my  seventy-third  year,  in  what 
may  be  called  excellent  health.  But  I  ought  to 
add,  that  my  intellectual  labour  has  been  generally 
carried  on  out  of  doors,'  Not  that  his  poems  were 
given  to  the  public  as  extempore  effusions ;  no  writer 

N 


178  JSSSAYS. 

of  his  time  was  more  impressed  with  the  necessity 
of  labour  for  the  perfect  poet.  He  thus  writes  to 
a  friend  who  seemed  destined  to  tread  the  path  of 
science  with  honour  and  usefulness,  and  was  in 
danger  of  weakening  himself  by  indulgence  in  the 
composition  of  verses. 

Again  and  again  I  must  repeat,  that  tlie  composition  of  verse  is 
infinitely  more  of  an  art  than  men  are  prepared  to  believe;  and 
absolute  success  in  it  depends  upon  innumerable  minutiae,  which 
it  grieves  me  you  should  stoop  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of.  Milton 
talks  of  '  pouring  easy  his  unpremeditated  verse.'  It  would  be  harsh, 
untrue,  and  odious,  to  say  there  is  anything  like  cant  in  this; 
but  it  is  not  true  to  the  letter,  and  tends  to  mislead.  I  could  point 
out  to  you  five  himdred  passages  in  MUton  upon  which  labour  has 
been  bestowed,  and  twice  five  hundred  more  to  which  additional 
laboiir  would  have  been  serviceable. 

Mr.  de  Quincey  calculated  many  years  ago,  that 
Wordsworth's  legs  must  have  carried  him  then 
nearly  200,000  miles;  and  an  old  friend  of  ours 
is  fond  of  telling  that  as  he  was  riding  one  summer 
afternoon  on  a  coach  along  Grasmere,  the  coach 
met  Mr.  Wordsworth  and  stopped;  and  a  young 
lady  inside  who  was  going  on  a  visit  to  the  poet, 
put  her  head  out  to  speak  to  him.  '  How  d'ye  do  ?' 
said  he, — '  how  d'ye  do  ?  Mrs.  Wordsworth  will  be 
delighted  to  see  you.  I  shall  be  back  in  the  evening. 
I'm  only  going  to  tea  with  Southey.'  Southey  lived 
not  less   than   fifteen  miles   off — hardly  a  yard   of 


WORDSWORTH'S  POEMS.  179 

level  ground  all  the  way.  Another  anecdote  we 
must  tell,  partly  illustrating  this  peripatetic  tendency, 
and  partly  as  giving  a  glimpse  of  that  practical 
humour,  which  Wordsworth  was  not  deficient  in, 
though  these  volumes  furnish  hut  this  soKtary  one 
— and  that  is  owing  to  Mr.  Justice  Coleridge. 

As  we  walked,  I  was  admiring  tlie  never-ceasing  sound  of  water, 
so  remarkable  in  this  country.     "I  was  walking,"  lie  said,  "on  the 

mountains,  with  the  Eastern  traveller;  it  was  after  rain,  and 

the  torrents  were  full.  I  said,  '  I  hope  you  like  your  companions — 
these  bounding,  joyous,  foaming  streams.'  '  No,'  said  the  traveller, 
pompously,  '  I  think  they  are  not  be  compared  in  delightful  effect 
with  the  sUent  solitude  of  the  Arabian  Desert.'  My  mountain  blood 
was  up.  I  quickly  observed  that  he  had  boots  and  a  stout  great-coat 
on,  and  said,  'I  am  sorry  you  don't  like  this ;  perhaps  I  can  show  you 
what  will  please  you  more.'  I  strode  away,  and  led  him  from  crag 
to  crag,  hill  to  vale,  and  vale  to  hill,  for  about  six  hours ;  till  I 
thought  I  should  have  had  to  bring  him  home,  he  was  so  tired." 

This  prodigious  hahit  of  walking,  and  that  other 
of  lying  in  luxurious  dreamy  meditation  on  sunny 
hank,  or  under  the  shade  of  trees,  account  for  the 
very  scanty  records  of  study  or  even  desultory  reading 
which  these  volumes  afford.  Wordsworth  was  fairly, 
though  by  no  means  deeply  or  curiously  read  in 
English  poetry;  Mr.  de  Quincey  adds,  in  ancient 
history ;  but  of  this  there  appears  no  proof  in  these  Q 

volumes,  nor  the  faintest  indication  in  his  writings,  y"^  ^^ 
The  only  foreign  literature  for  which  he  seems   to 
have  had  any  taste  was   Italian,  though   he   could 


180  JESSAYS. 

speak  French  fluently,  and  had  a  fair  knowledge  of 
German :  of  the  Greek  poets  he  talks,  but  with  the 
Latin  poets  he  had  that  familiar  acquaintance  which 
was  so  much  more  common  with  our  fathers  and 
grandfathers  than  among  ourselves ;  he  even  translated 
into  rhymed  heroic  verse  several  books  of  the  ^neid. 
With  philosophical  writers  and  philosophical  systems 
he  shows  no  acquaintance,  and  of  physical  science 
he  had  no  special  knowledge.  In  fact,  his  range  of 
reading  was  extremely  limited,  and  neither  his  letters 
nor  his  recorded  conversations  would  lead  us  to 
suppose  that  within  this  range  his  knowledge  was 
profound  or  his  observation  keen.  We  cannot  cull 
from  these  two  volumes  a  single  critical  remark  that 
betrays  extraordinary  sagacity  or  profound  com- 
prehension of  an  aesthetic  law.  He  had  or  fancied 
that  he  had,  a  taste  for  old  books.  '  The  only 
modem  books  that  I  read,'  he  writes  to  Archdeacon 
Wrangham,  '  are  those  of  travels,  or  such  as  relate 
to  matters  of  fact — and  the  only  modern  books  tliat 
I  care  for;  but  as  to  old  ones,  I  am  like  yourself — 
scarcely  anything  comes  amiss  to  me.'  We  question 
whether  this  taste  for  old  books  was  much  more  than 
a  liking  for  the  thoughtful  poets  of  the  Stuart  period, 
such  as  Daniel  and  Herbert;  stimulated  perhaps  by 
very  genuine   indifference  towards,  if  not  contempt 


WORDSWORTH'S  FOEMS.  181 

for,  all  contemporaiy  literature.  Even  the  great 
luminaries  of  our  literature  only  beamed  on  him  from 
one  side  of  their  sphered  brightness.  Chaucer's 
descriptions,  sparkling  with  the  dews  of  morning,  and 
his  gentle  piety  of  heart;  the  long-drawn  sweetness 
of  Spenser's  verse,  and  the  elevated  purity  of  his 
moral;  Milton's  austere  grandeur  of  thought  and 
stately  pomp  of  imagination — all  these  were  Words- 
worth's own,  and  he  listened  to  them  with  rapt 
attention  as  to  the  voice  of  his  own  soul.  But  of 
a  greater  than  any  or  all  of  these,  we  can  only  recal 
one  trace : 

The  gentle  Lady  married  to  the  Moor. 

And  here  it  is  not  the  agony  of  passion,  nor  the 
subtle  working  of  the  insidious  poison,  nor  the 
diabolic  revelation  of  concentrated  coiled  malignity, 
that  he  dwells  on,  as  characteristic  excellences  of  the 
play,  but  the  gentleness  of  the  victim  attracts  and 
fascinates  him.  In  all  that  mighty  symphony  of 
maidenly  admiration,  of  manly  love,  of  stately  age, 
of  vigorous  youth,  of  calm  domestic  peace,  of  'the 
pride,  pomp,  circumstance  of  glorious  war,'  of  bound- 
less faith,  of  agonizing  jealousy,  of  wrath,  hate,  fond- 
ness, and  despair,  all  blending  into  one  complex 
devouring  passion,  he  hears  but  the  simple  melody 


182  USSATS. 

of  the  flute.  In  that  woof  of  death  shot  over  with 
all  the  glorious  and  changing  hues  of  life,  he  sees 
but  one  simple  flower  blooming  by  a  grass-green 
grave.  That  marvellous  and  many-sided  life-picture 
is  to  him  only  'patience  sitting  on  a  monument, 
smiling  at  grief.'  Let  us  not  be  misunderstood; 
of  course  Wordsworth  was  acquainted  with  Shak- 
speare's  works;  and  of  course,  with  all  the  world, 
he  placed  him  with  Homer,  at  the  head  of  the  first 
class  of  poets,  while  he  knew  that  Spenser  and 
Milton  only  belonged  to  the  second.  But  it  is  the 
of  course  that  marks  the  point  at  which  his  ap- 
preciation stopped.  There  come  from  his  lips 
none  of  those  penetrating  flashes  of  light  whicli 
broke  from  Coleridge  amid  lustrous  clouds  and 
radiant  darkness,  whenever  he  spoke  of  the  great 
masters  of  the  Epos  and  the  Drama,  communicating 
to  others  his  own  illuminating  insight,  the  result 
at  once  of  profound  study  and  profound  afiection. 
In  fact,  we  doubt  whether  Wordsworth  read  to  en- 
large the  range  of  his  conception  or  sympathies. 
In  the  language  of  modem  criticism,  he  kept  his 
own  centre,  and  thence  surveyed  men  and  books ; 
never  attempted  to  gain  their  centre.  De  Quincey 
admirably  points  out  how  little  needful  books  were 
to  a  man  who  drew  such  an  'enormity  of  pleasure' 


WORDSWORTH'S  FOEMS.  183 

from  the  everlasting  variety  of  nature's  common  ap- 
pearances, who  could  derive 

Even  from  the  meanest  flower  that  hlows 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears, 

who  felt  that 

One  impiilse  from  the  vernal  wood 

Could  teach  him  more  of  man, 
Of  moral  evil,  and  of  good. 

Than  all  the  sages  can. 

One  story,  thoroughly  characteristic  of  Words- 
worth's indifference  to  every  production  of  modem 
growth  but  his  own  poetry,  we  recently  heard  from 
a  friend.  Possibly  it  may  be  in  print,  but  we  have 
not  seen  it.  When  Roh  Roy  was  published,  some 
of  Mr.  W^ords worth's  friends  made  a  pic-nic,  and  the 
amusement  of  the  day  was  to  be  the  new  novel.  He 
accompanied  them  to  the  selected  spot,  joined  them 
at  luncheon,  and  then  said — '  Now,  before  you  begin, 
I  will  read  you  a  poem  of  my  own  on  Roh  Roy.  It 
will  increase  your  pleasure  in  the  new  book.'  Of 
course,  every  one  was  delighted,  and  he  recited  the 
well-known  verses ;  and  the  moment  he  had  finished, 
said,  '  Well,  now  I  hope  you  will  enjoy  yom*  book ;' 
and  walked  quietly  off,  and  was  seen  no  more  all  the 
afternoon. 

The  very  rough  mode  in  which  he  handled  books 


184  MS  AYS. 

showed  how  little  he  cared  for  them.  Southey  said, 
to  let  him  into  a  fine  library  was  like  turning  a 
bear  into  a  tulip  garden ;  and  De  Quincey  tells  of  his 
cutting  open  a  '  pracht-edition'  of  Burke  with  a  knife 
he  had  just  used  to  butter  toast.  What  a  contrast 
his  pious  remorse  at  the  ravage  of  the  nut-bough — 

I  felt  a  sense  of  pain  when  I  beheld 
The  silent  trees,  and  the  intruding  sky ; — 

and  the  earnest  reverence  of  the  exhortation  that 
follows : — 

Then,  dearest  maiden!   move  along  these  shades 
In  gentleness  of  heart;   with  gentle  hand 
Touch— for  there  is  a  spirit  in  the  woods. 

We  have  left  ourselves  no  space  to  speak  of  the 
poet's  later  political  opinions.  It  is  well  known 
that  they  were  of  what  is  called  a  high  Tory  com- 
plexion— especially  that  he  looked  with  no  favourable 
eye  on  the  sort  of  education  that  has  been  latterly 
spreading  among  the  poor ;  that  he  extremely  disliked 
dissent,  and  disapproved  of  modem  concession  to  it ; 
that  he  anticipated  the  most  disastrous  consequences 
from  the  Catholic  Emancipation  and  Reform  Bills. 
He  passed,  in  fact,  apparently  from  one  pole  to  the 
other  of  the  political  sphere,  just  as  his  friends 
Southey  and  Coleridge  did,  and  under  the  influence 
of  like  causes,  the  chief  of  which  was  undoubtedly 


WOBBSWORTE' S  POEMS.  185 

the  strong  national  feeling  that  was  roused  in  them 
all  by  Napoleon's  strides  of  conquest,  and  the  danger 
that  at  one  time  seemed  to  threaten  England.  The 
violence  and  crimes  of  the  Jacobins  had  before  this 
alienated  their  sympathies  from  the  French  Re- 
volution. They,  men  of  thought  and  feeling,  not 
men  of  experience  and  action,  had  dreamt  of  a  rose- 
water  revolution,  and  sickened  at  blood.  At  first, 
they  merely  stood  aloof,  displeased  equally  at  the 
proceedings  of  the  French  and  at  our  declaration  of 
war.  But  when  danger  came  near  'the  inviolate 
island  of  the  brave  and  free,'  they  not  only  felt  as 
Englishmen  and  as  patriots,  but  looked  upon  their 
country  as  the  last  citadel  and  stronghold  of  liberty ; 
and  henceforth  war  to  the  knife  with  France  was 
identical  with  devotion  to  freedom  and  virtue. 
During  the  whole  war  with  Napoleon,  the  Whigs 
did  what  they  dared  to  thwart  its  continuance,  and 
to  annoy  those  who  carried  it  on,  and  so  became  to 
a  degree  identified  with  the  enemies  of  the  country. 
This  is  the  feeling  that  lay  originally  at  the  bottom 
of  Wordsworth's  dislike  of  them.  Then,  again,  he 
never  was  at  heart  a  democrat.  Like  Milton,  he 
would  have  had  an  aristocracy  of  intellect  and  virtue. 
There  is  not  a  trace  of  the  feeling,  that  numbers 
should  outweigh  worth  from  beginning  to  end  of  his 


186  USSATS. 

writings.  He  had,  "besides,  a  strong  distaste  for  city 
life,  for  its  endless  bustle,  and  its  dull  routine,  ani- 
mated as  he  thought  by  vanity  and  the  desire  of 
wealth.  Commerce,  trade,  and  manufactures  were 
not,  in  his  estimation,  the  sources  of  a  nation's 
greatness;  but  on  country  life,  its  occupations,  its 
traditions,  and  its  customs  he  looked  with  a  fond 
affection,  especially  on  that  national  church  which  so 
associates  itself  to  the  senses,  the  imagination,  and 
the  understanding  with  a  country  life.  The  village 
spire  and  the  squire's  mansion  are  the  centres  of  this 
life,  and  Wordsworth's  passion  for  nature  could 
scarcely  have  failed  to  throw  something  of  a  poetic 
lustre,  in  addition  to  the  value  his  reason  and  his 
heart  attached  to  them,  over  the  institutions  of  which 
both  were  symbols.  His  early  association  with 
Coleridge,  too,  tended  to  open  to  him  the  deep 
foundations  on  which  our  national  institutions  rest, 
and  to  inspire  him  with  a  reverence  for  them,  and 
a  cautious  fear  of  weakening  them  by  attempts  at 
improvement.  If,  however,  any  person  is  inclined  to 
call  him  reactionist  and  bigot,  we  would  only  remark 
that  there  are  three  classes  of  politicians, — tliose  who 
under  the  pressure  of  an  existing  evil  seek  for  change, 
without  the  faculty  of  discerning  to  what  that  change 
will  inevitably  lead ;  ignorant,  in  fact,  of  the  law  of 


WORBSWOETH' S  POEMS.  187 

development  which  links  together  political  events 
and  gives  unity  to  History ; — ^those  who,  with  con- 
scious and  definite  aim,  plant  the  great  hereafter 
in  the  now,  and  are  not  consequently  liable  to  be 
startled  and  terrified,  and  driven  into  reaction  by  the 
results  of  their  own  actions ; — and  thirdly,  those  who 
with  clear  eye  discern  the  dependence  of  the  hereafter 
upon  the  now,  and  because  they  shrink  from  the 
hereafter,  refuse  to  take  the  step  which  renders  it 
inevitably  certain.  To  the  last  class  belonged 
William  Wordsworth. 

Fraser's  Magazine, 

July  and  August,  1851. 


188  ESSJYS. 


POETRY   AND    CRITICISM. 

Dr.  Johnson,  in  more  than  a  century  and  a  half 
of  English  literary  history,  "beginning  with  Cowley 
and  ending  with  Gray,  found  less  than  threescore 
writers  in  verse  whom  he  deemed  worthy  of  a  place 
in  his  biographical  collection.  Though,  in  his  own 
line,  and  in  cases  where  partiality  did  not  disturb 
his  judgment,  a  tolerably  correct  arbiter  of  literary 
reputation,  the  Doctor  would  find  hard  work  to 
persuade  any  well-read  person  of  the  present  day, 
that  more  than  half  the  verse-writers  whose  lives 
he  has  composed  have  any  claim  to  be  called  poets, 
or  even  men  of  distinguished  talents.  Perhaps  the 
account  might  be  balanced  by  the  addition  to  his 
list  of  as  many  names  as  a  modem  judgment  of  the 
literary  celebrities  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  would  erase  from  it.  We  have  learned 
to    look   for   other    qualities    in    those   we    honour 


FOETRY  AND  CRITICISM,  189 

with  the  name  of  poets  than  such  as  pleased  the 
critics  of  Johnson's  age;  or,  at  least,  we  have 
learned  a  different  relative  estimate  of  poetical  gifts, 
and  are  used  to  flatter  ourselves  that  ours  is  a  truer 
and  deeper  view  than  the  one  held  by  our  grand- 
mothers. The  result  is  that  reputations  have  since 
that  time  both  sunk  and  risen,  forgotten  writers 
have  been  dug  up  from  the  dust  of  oblivion,  and 
others  who  lived  then  per  ora  virum,  in  the  gossip 
of  Mrs.  Thrale's  tea-table,  and  in  the  pages  of  the 
oracular  Doctor,  are  buried  out  of  sight  and  hearing, 
and  silence  covers  them.  But  taking  all  such 
changes  of  opinion  into  account,  the  century  and 
a-lialf  over  which  Johnson's  immortal  work  extends 
— for  immortal  it  must  be  called,  though,  in  re- 
verence be  it  spoken,  it  is  a  collection  of  lives  which 
is  lamentably  wanting  in  many  qualities  of  first- 
rate  biography — can  on  no  mode  of  forming  the 
list  be  made  to  include  a  hundred  writers  in  verse 
who  attained  even  moderate  excellence.  This  gives 
one  for  every  year  and  a-half  at  a  rough  calculation. 
Of  these,  our  ten  fingers  amply  suffice  for  the  calcu- 
lation required  to  number  those  whose  present  re- 
putation could  be  an  object  of  ambition  to  a 
reasonable  man ;  and  how  poorly  the  denial  of  lasting 
fame  was  compensated  to  the  rest   by  any  Esau's 


190  USSATS. 

chance  of  discounting  immortality  for  pottage,  'the 
Gruh-street  tradition,'  which  belongs  to  a  consider- 
able portion  of  this  period,  and  the  details  known  of 
so  many  of  the  lives,  leave  no  doubt. 

This  familiar  fact  of  our  literary  history  may 
serve,  with  change  of  time  and  place,  for  a  certainly 
not  exaggerated  statement  of  what  is  true  of  any 
equal  range  of  years  in  the  literary  history  of  the 
world.  And  it  would  seem  to  prove  that,  however 
common  a  certain  degree  of  poetical  faculty  may  be 
among  men — and  that  it  is  common,  the  almost 
universal  liking  for  poetry  indicates — the  possession 
of  this  faculty  in  such  perfection  and  strength  as 
to  enable  the  possessor  to  produce  genuine  poems 
is  exceedingly  rare.  Why  this  is  so,  and  whether 
the  defect  be  one  of  nature  or  of  training,  an  original 
vigour  denied,  or  a  due  cultivation  neglected,  is 
a  most  interesting  question ;  but  one  which  would 
require  us  to  diverge  from  our  immediate  route  into 
psychology  and  the  science  of  education.  We  merely 
point  to  the  fact  that  poetical  genius,  capable  of  artis- 
tically manifesting  itself,  is,  as  a  matter  of  experience, 
extremely  rare.  Yet,  at  this  moment,  we  have  ranged 
before  us  in  '  glittering  row,'  a  set  of  volumes  in  verse 
by  not  fewer  than  half  as  many  authors  as  Johnson 
found  poets  in  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  and  these 


FOETRT  AND  CRITICISM.  191 

form  but  a  fraction  of  those  published  in  England 
within  the  last  year.  Not  one  of  these  volumes  was 
published  without  a  belief  on  the  writer's  part  that  he 
was  an  exception  to  the  general  rule  of  poetical  inca- 
pacity. For,  draw  as  we  may  upon  our  candour,  we 
cannot  suppose  that  any  but  a  lunatic  at  large  would 
go  to  considerable  expense  to  give  the  world  testimony 
that  he  or  she  was  that  most  despised  of  drudges — 
a  verse-writer  without  poetical  genius.  Still  less 
can  we  suppose  that  in  many  of  these  cases  any  but 
the  writer  has  been  at  the  charge  of  publication. 
Sint  Mcecenates,  non  deerunt  Marones^  has  long 
ceased  to  be  the  limiting  condition  with  authors. 
The  general  diffusion  of  books  and  wealth  produces 
a  capacity  for  writing  verses  in  numerous  persons 
rich  enough  to  be  each  his  own  Maecenas.  And 
so  we  are  obliged  to  conclude  that,  in  a  single 
year,  there  are  among  us  as  many  persons  of  com- 
fortable means  living  under  a  conviction  that  they 
are  poets,  as  there  have  been  writers  worthy  really 
of  the  name,  even  in  the  most  liberal  interpretation 
of  its  meaning,  since  Chaucer  five  hundred  years 
ago  first  set  our  English  life  to  English  music. 
And  this  goes  on  every  year,  so  that,  by  a  moderate 
computation,  there  cannot  be  in  England  at  this 
moment  less  than  a  thousand  persons,  men,  women, 


192  ESSAYS. 

and  adolescents,  eating,  drinking,  sleeping,  walking 
about,  and  in  some  cases  probably  talking  rationally 
and  entrusted  with  important  duties,  wlio  have  com- 
mitted overt  acts  based  upon  a  supposition  so  extra- 
vagant, so  contrary  to  all  deductions  of  experience,  so 
certainly  and  entirely  fanciful  in  nine  hundred  and 
ninety  of  the  thousand  cases  as  fully,  so  far  as  the  ex- 
ample extends,  to  justify  the  cynical  observation,  that 
'  half  the  world  is  mad,  and  the  other  half  does  not  know 
it.'  Indeed,  were  we  disposed  to  treat  as  anything 
more  than  one  of  those  amusing  delusions  incident 
to  the  various  forms  of  monomania,  the  assertion  so 
frequently  met  with  in  the  preface  to  published 
volumes  of  verse,  that  the  publication  has  been  urged 
upon  the  author  by  admiring  friends,  we  must 
assume  for  every  monomaniacal  verse-publisher  a 
circle  of  friends  afflicted  with  a  still  more  unac- 
countable form  of  monomania,  if  somewhat  more 
amiable  in  its  symptoms.  For  the  frenzy  of  the 
verse-writer  may  be  partially  assigned  to  vanity  and 
the  pleasure  of  composition ;  that  of  the  admiring 
friends  would  be  pure  Bedlamite  distraction.  But 
in  fact  the  friends  have  ever  this  singularity,  that 
they  rejoice  in  the  name  of  Harris,  and  neither  post- 
office,  police,  nor  tax-collector,  knows  of  their  local 
habitation. 


POETRY  AND  CRITICISM.  193 

Perhaps  we  may  "be  suspected  of  having  gone 
to  that  expense  in  educating  ourselves  for  the  func- 
tions of  the  critic,  which  Swift  asserts  to  be  in- 
dispensable for  the  true  performance  of  the  character, 
in  opposition  to  those  defamers  who  could  make 
out  '  that  a  true  critic  is  a  sort  of  mechanic  set  up 
with  a  stock  and  tools  for  his  trade,  at  as  little 
expense  as  a  tailor.'  Swift  denies  this  position,  and 
says,  'On  the  contrary,  nothing  is  more  certain 
than  that  it  requires  greater  layings  out  to  be  free 
of  the  critic's  company,  than  that  of  any  other  you 
can  name.  For,  as  to  be  a  true  beggar,  it  will 
cost  the  richest  candidate  every  groat  he  is  worth; 
so,  before  one  can  commence  a  true  critic,  it  will 
cost  a  man  all  the  good  qualities  of  his  mind.'  We 
may  be  suspected,  we  say,  of  having  got  rid  of 
all  good-nature,  faculty  of  being  pleased,  &c.,  and 
of  laying  our  indigestion  to  the  charge  of  wholesome 
nutriment.  The  poetry  may  be  good,  but  we  may 
have  no  stomach  for  it.  When  we  have  ceased  to 
admire,  enjoy,  and  thrive  upon  the  various  banquets 
which  true  poets  have  set  before  us,  rich  with  the 
spoils  of  time,  and  like  the  widow's  cruse,  undi- 
minished by  consumption,  where  appetite  but  grows 
by  what  it  feeds  on,  and  fulness  is  not  satiety, 
nor  repetition  weariness — when  we  no  longer  catch 
0 


194  JESS  AYS. 

in  the  poets'  strains  fragments  of  that  eternal  sym- 
phony of  which  they  are  at  once  memorial  and 
prophecy;  when  heart,  intellect,  and  sense  cease  to 
find  in  those  strains,  broken  and  imperfect  as  they 
are  at  best,  hints  of  that  perfect  and  harmonious 
fiilness  of  satisfaction  which  is  the  longing  desire 
and  anticipated  fruition  of  all  faithful  souls — then 
we  may  accept  our  own  deadness  of  heart  and  blind- 
ness of  sight,  as  a  probable  reason  why  we  look 
upon  the  several  hundreds  of  gentlemen  and  ladies, 
now  living  in  the  land,  and  convicted  of  having 
published  volumes  of  verse,  much  with  the  same 
feelings  as  a  man  born  deaf  must  contemplate  the 
whirling  mazes  of  the  waltz.  Nor  can  we  accuse 
ourselves  of  setting  up  a  fanciful  standard  of  poetic 
excellence,  and  cultivating  a  morbid  fastidiousness 
which  admits  of  no  excellence  that  is  not  perfect. 
We  are  too  cognizant  of  the  infinite  variety  of  ima- 
ginative power,  of  the  admirable  effects  of  this 
variety,  to  indulge  a  narrow  taste  in  poetry;  and 
too  well  aware  of  the  difficulties  that  hamper  its 
exercise,  and  render  perfect  works  of  art,  or  even 
perfect  parts  of  works  of  art,  the  rarest  accomplish- 
ments of  human  skill,  to  be  unhealthily  fastidious. 
But  with  the  most  catholic  aspirations,  with  the 
wish  to  be   as   large   in   sympathy,   and  as  liberal 


POEMS  AND  CRITICISM.  195 

of  admiration,  as  is  consistent  with  any  high  en- 
joyment of  true  excellence,  we  must  draw  distinct- 
ions between  things  different  in  kind;  we  cannot 
call  Euclid's  Elements,  on  the  one  hand,  poetry  j 
nor  can  we  any  more  give  that  honoured  title,  and 
the  emotions  that  belong  to  it,  to  compositions  that 
have  nothing  but  rhyme  and  measure — and  those 
seldom  good — to  separate  them  from  the  ordinary 
talk  of  vaguely-perceiving,  coldly-feeling,  and  inar- 
ticulately-speaking men  and  women.  In  the  one 
case,  we  call  the  geometry,  perfect  as  it  is,  not 
poetry,  but  science — a  body  of  abstract  truths  of 
space;  in  the  other,  we  call  the  producing  state  of 
mind  stupidity,  dulness,  weakness,  or  some  other 
constituent  mark  of  the  non-apprehensive ;  and  what 
is  produced  we  call  stuff,  nonsense,  inarticulate 
gibberish,  or  any  other  term  which  may  seem  ade- 
quately to  present  some  mark  of  the  non-appre- 
hended. 

Let  us  see  if,  by  following  up  the  antithesis  thus 
suggested  between  poetry  and  science,  we  cannot 
gain  some  tolerably  clear  notions  on  the  essential 
characteristics  of  poetry,  both  as  mental  process  and 
product — on  the  nature  of  poetic  insight  and  of 
poems.  As  things  in  general,  whether  sensible 
objects,  actions,  emotions,  and  thoughts,  are  the 
02 


196  :essays. 

matter  upon  which  the  understanding  operates  in  its 
search  after  the  body  of  truth,  the  knowledge  of 
which  we  call  science;  so  the  same  objects  furnish 
to  the  imagination  the  subject-matter  of  that  peculiar 
mode  of  apprehension  which  we  call  poetic,  and  of 
that  peculiar  form  of  language  which  we  call  poetry 
in  the  mass,  and  poems  in  particular  examples.  The 
difference  is  not  in  the  objects,  but  in  the  faculty 
which  apprehends  and  operates  upon  the  objects. 
The  understanding  takes  any  object  presented  through 
the  consciousness,  and  proceeds  to  analyse  it  into 
separate  qualities,  to  name  it  and  refer  it  to  a  class 
of  objects  with  which  it  possesses  certain  of  its 
qualities  in  common.  Henceforward,  when  it  asks 
itself  what  the  thing  is,  the  understanding  can  answer 
that  it  is  this  thing  or  that,  giving  some  name 
expressive  of  those  common  qualities  which  it  has 
along  with  all  members  of  its  class.  The  properties 
which  it  has  to  distinguish  it  from  another  member 
of  its  class  are  nothing  to  science,  and  the  imder- 
standing  j)ro  hac  vice  takes  no  thought  about  them. 
Of  all  science  viewed  in  its  statical  aspect,  apart  from 
the  experience  of  change  and  the  idea  of  cause,  this 
classification,  naming,  and  definition  are  the  ultimate 
processes.  And  if  we  examine  the  higher  branch 
of  dynamical  science,  what  is  it  we  seek  to  know 


FOETRT  AND  CBITICISM.  197 

about  the  successive  states  of  the  object  we  in- 
vestigate? Is  it  not  again  an  analysis  of  the 
concrete  phenomena  presented  to  us  by  experience 
at  successive  times  that  we  have  to  perform?  We 
want  to  find  what  is  the  phenomenon  invariably 
antecedent  to  some  given  phenomenon ;  and  we  can 
obtain  the  knowledge  only  by  analysing  a  complex 
coil  of  phenomena,  and  after  many  experiments, 
much  expenditure  of  hypothesis,  we  succeed  in  getting 
at  the  invariable  antecedent.  We  have  then  es- 
tablished the  sequence  wanted,  and  all  the  attendant 
phenomena  are  so  much  refuse.  The  process  through- 
out is  analytical  in  its  object,  and  may  be  described 
as  an  endeavour  to  detect  such  identities  among 
objects  coexisting  in  space,  as  Avill  enable  the  mind 
to  classify,  define,  and  name  them,  and  such  con- 
nexion between  objects  successively  existing  in  time, 
as  renders  the  separate  currents  of  that  mighty  ocean 
of  intermingling,  interacting  vortices  distinguishable, 
methodical,  intelligible.  A  scientific  apprehension 
of  the  universe  would  be  a  knowledge  of  all  the 
classes  into  which  things  can  at  any  moment  be 
divided,  and  of  the  corresponding  classes  into  which 
their  immediate  antecedents  would  have  been  divi- 
sible. Its  lowest  concept  would  be  classes  cleared 
of   individuals,   its   most  concrete  words  names   of 


198  i:ssAYS. 

species,  its  apotheosis  "would  be  wlien,  having  un- 
ravelled the  infinite  web  of  creation,  it  could  pass 
from  the  outermost  edge  of  its  circumference  along  a 
single  thread  to  the  centre  and  the  source  of  all,  and 
its  language  would  then  have  attained  its  highest 
stage  of  generalisation,  and  would  consist  of  two 
words,  cause  and  efiect. 

Imagination  takes  the  same  object  that  we  sup- 
posed before  presented  to  the  understanding.  As 
by  chemical  attraction  it  lays  hold  on  precisely 
that  part  of  the  phenomenon  which  the  understanding 
rejects,  passing  lightly  over  and  taking  little  heed 
of  that  which  the  understanding  was  in  quest  of. 
What  the  object  has  in  common  with  the  class 
to  which  its  name  and  its  definition  refer  it,  the 
imagination  neglects  as  not  characteristic,  and  seizes 
eagerly  on  that  which  constitutes  it  an  individual. 
It  may  or  may  not  happen  that  science  has,  in 
the  various  systems  of  classification  necessary  for 
its  purposes,  taken  separately  and  at  different  times, 
all  the  qualities  of  the  object  which  strike  the  ima- 
gination; but  it  never  happens  that  it  has  taken 
them  simultaneously  and  all  together.  And  we 
are,  therefore,  fully  justified  in  saying  that  ima- 
gination neglects,  comparatively,  the  single,  separate 
qualities  of  an  object,  on  which  the  understanding 


FOETET  AND  CRITICISM.  199t 

is  at  any  one  time  engaged,  and  fixes  on  the  complex 
residue  of  qualities  of  which  the  understanding  only- 
takes  heed  to  throw  them  aside  as  nothing  to  the 
purpose.  Where  the  understanding  is  looking  for 
such  qualities  as  will  enable  it  to  give  the  object 
a  name  common  to  as  many  other  objects  as  possible, 
and  therefore  including  as  little  content  (as  the 
logicians  call  it)  as  possible,  the  imagination  is  look- 
ing for  those  qualities  which  fill  the  senses,  stir 
the  emotions,  and  form  a  concrete  whole  as  crowded 
with  content  as  is  consistent  with  unity.  And  if 
a  scientific  concept  of  the  universe  be,  as  we  have 
said,  a  concept  of  classes  tending  upwards  to  unity 
as  cause ;  a  poetical  view  of  the  universe  is  an 
exhaustive  presentation  of  all  phenomena,  as  indi- 
vidual phenomenal  wholes  of  ascending  orders  of 
complexity,  whose  earliest  stage  is  the  organization 
of  single  co-existing  phenomena  into  concrete  in- 
dividuals, and  its  apotheosis  the  marvellous  picture 
of  the  avrfpi6/jLov  fyeTutcr/Ma  of  the  Infinite  Life,  no 
longer  conceived  as  the  oceanic  pulsation  which  the 
understanding  called  cause  and  effect,  but  seen  as 
unutterable  splendour,  heard  as  awful  rhythm  of 
far-sounding  harmonies,  and  comprehended  as  the 
Time  and  Space-vesture  of  Him  who  in  his  own 
absolute  being  is  incomprehensible. 


200  USSATS. 

If  any  of  tlie  writers  who  may  feel  aggrieved 
by  our  remarks  upon  their  works  think  fit  to  revenge 
themselves  by  pronouncing  this  to  be  sheer  nonsense, 
we  shall  not  take  pains  to  turn  the  point  of  the 
retort.  We  do  not  think  it  so,  or  we  should  not 
allow  it  to  stand;  but  any  extremely  abstract  and 
general  statement  which  includes  a  very  large  and 
multifarious  class  of  mental  processes  and  products 
is  sure  to  be  distasteful  and  unintelligible  to  most 
readers,  so  we  shall  not  weary  their  patience  with 
what  they  will  probably  call  metaphysical  jargon. 
But  we  venture  to  state  as  a  practical  conclusion 
— not  dependent  upon  the  preceding  remarks,  though 
involved  in  them — that  whatever  objects  poetry 
deals  with  must  be  presented  to  the  mind  of  the 
poet  as  concretions  of  diverse  phenomena  organized 
into  phenomenal  unity  by  the  pervading  vital  in- 
fluence of  a  subjective  idea.  And  this  gives  us 
the  fundamental  condition  of  poetic  activity  as  well 
as  of  the  products  of  such  activity,  that  such  pre- 
sentations must  be  made  to  the  mind  of  the  poet, 
and  by  him  given  to  the  reader,  as  include  and 
contain  at  least  all  the  qualities  or  properties  of 
an  object  necessary  to  constitute  it  a  possible  phe- 
nomenal objective  whole.  If  it  be  a  flower  of 
which  the  poet  wishes  to  raise  the  image,  it  must 


POETRY  AND  CRITICISM.  201 

be  a  particular  flower,  and  have  the  form  and  colour 
of  some  particular  possible,  though  not  necessarily 
actual,  flower.  If  his  language  fails  to  express  these 
two  qualities  at  least,  it  fails  by  so  much  of  being 
poetic.  If  it  be  a  human  action,  it  must  be  pre- 
sented at  least  with  such  characteristics  as  distinguish 
one  human  action  from  another.  If  it  be  a  natural 
scene,  the  presentation  must  embrace  such  objects 
made  out  with  such  detail,  as  are  necessary  to  dis- 
tinguish the  scene  for  the  purpose  in  hand  from 
another  similar  scene.  But  we  need  not  pursue  the 
illustration.  It  is  evident  that  poetry  attains  its 
aim  just  in  proportion  as  it  creates  individual  and 
not  general  presentations,  just  in  proportion,  that 
is,  as  it  is  distinguished  from  and  antithetical  to 
the  representations  of  science. 

Let  not  any  one  run  away  with  the  hasty  notion 
that  this  amounts  to  asserting  that  poetical  pre- 
sentation consists  in  enumeration  of  detail.  The  fact 
is  just  the  opposite.  It  consists  in  the  presentation 
of  a  whole,  which  arranges  and  subordinates  all 
detail.  How  much  detail  is  requisite  in  each  case 
depends  upon  the  nature  of  the  whole  contemplated; 
but  in  no  case  is  detail  enumerated — introduced  for 
its  own  sake — but  organised.  There  must  be  parts, 
but  no  simple  additions  of  parts  will  make  the  whole ; 


202  :essats. 

on  the  contrary,  they  are  not  parts  till  the  whole  is 
completed,  or  except  in  reference  to  the  idea  of  the 
whole. 

Such,  then,  are  the  fundamental  properties  of 
poetry,  that,  as  the  antithesis  of  science,  it  indi- 
vidualises instead  of  classifying,  presents  organic 
wholes  instead  of  severed  parts;  things  actual  or 
possible,  instead  of  abstract  general  names.  When- 
ever the  mind  is  thus  engaged  it  is  making  poetry. 
Language  bears  testimony  to  the  multifarious  and 
incessant  exercise  of  this  power  among  men  from  the 
earliest  infancy  of  our  race,  and  as  M.  Jourdain 
talked  prose  all  his  life  without  knowing  it,  the 
dullest  proser  among  us  would  be  astonished,  and 
perhaps  disgusted,  if  he  were  conscious  of  the  vast 
amount  and  the  high  quality  of  the  poetry  he  utters, 
between  getting  up  and  going  to  bed,  every  day  of 
the  year.  But  we  live  upon  the  past  and  inlierit 
other  men's  labours.  We  are  not  poets  because  we 
are  the  heirs  of  the  poets;  and,  as  a  senseless 
spendthrift  squanders  untold  wealth  without  any 
sense  of  its  value,  or  any  adequate  return  of  pleasure 
or  profit,  we  may  squander  all  the  poetry  of  our 
current  language  without  any  thought  of  the  pre- 
ciousness  of  its  material,  and  find  in  that  which 
might  be  ever  giving  us  glimpses  of  the  glory  and 


POETRY  AND  CEITICISM.  203 

splendour  of  the  universe,  only  the  means  of  satis- 
fying the  wants  of  our  logical  or  practical  under- 
standing. The  language  which  hears  the  stamp  of 
imagination  may  by  use  and  insensibility  become  to 
us  only  a  circulating  medium  of  conventional  signs, 
and  we  may  apply  words  and  phrases  alive  with 
presentative  significance,  without  assigning  to  them 
anything  more  than  the  representative  or  symbolical 
relation  to  objects  which  the  coinage  of  the  under- 
standing originally  expresses. 

Now,  some  one  will  say,  a  great  deal  has  been 
said  about  poetry,  and  not  a  word  about  verse ;  and 
a  position  has  been  taken  up  which  assigns  to  the 
poetical  faculty  or  faculties  an  important  part  in  the 
formation  of  language,  as  if  rhythm,  verse,  stanza, 
rhyme,  were  no  elements  of  poetry  at  all,  but  only- 
accidental  graces.  We  believe  them  to  be  no 
accidental  gi-aces,  if  accidental  mean  fortuitous;  but 
accidental  they  certainly  are  in  the  logical  sense  of 
the  word,  as  not  essential  to  the  definition  of  poetry, 
nor  conditional  of  its  production.  They  belong  to 
the  poetry  of  man,  because  he  is  an  emotional  as  well 
as  a  perceptive  being,  and  arise  from  the  fact  that 
objects  presented  to  the  mind  with  living  fulness 
and  power,  are  by  the  constitution  of  our  nature 
adapted  to  excite  an  emotion  of  pleasure,  apart  fi:om 


204  ASSAYS. 

our  practical  concern  with  them.  Whatever  the 
presentation  be  in  itself,  whether  the  object  presented 
be  such  as  we  should  like  or  dislike  in  its  actual 
manifestation  to  our  senses,  or  in  its  effects  upon  our 
actual  interests,  we  delight  in  the  satisfaction  it  gives 
to  our  perceptive  or  speculative  faculties.  In  minds 
of  peculiar  sensibility  this  pleasure  is  heightened  in 
proportion  to  the  keenness  of  these  faculties,  and  the 
attractions  of  the  objects  presented,  till  the  emotion 
excited  seeks  relief  spontaneously  by  rhythmical 
expression.  We  cannot  now  discuss  the  law  by 
which  all  emotion,  that  is  not  mere  pain,  is  impelled 
in  its  highest  degrees  to  rhythmical  expression,  nor 
are  we  prepared  to  make  any  assertion  as  to  the 
universality  of  this  law,  or  its  limitation  to  individuals 
of  peculiar  organization.  But  we  think  no  one  will 
deny  that  poetry,  and  music,  and  dancing,  all  rhyth- 
mical art  in  fact,  did  begin,  and  must  have  begun, 
as  we  have  suggested.  We  believe  that,  like  the 
fundamental  poetic  faculty,  whose  function  is  to  or- 
ganize diverse  phenomena  into  unities,  so  this  at- 
tendant faculty  of  singing  from  the  emotions  of 
pleasure  caused  by  the  perceptive  presentations  so 
made,  must  be  in  a  degree  common  to  all  men 
and  women  who  can  enjoy  song.  But  we  are  not 
prepared  to  maintain  this  as  certain.     This,  however, 


POETRY  AND  CMITICISM.  205 

we  have  no  doubt  about,  that  the  rhythm  of  poems 
expresses  the  emotion  of  the  singer,  just  as  the  words 
of  song  express  the  presentations  of  his  imaginative 
faculty;  and  that  the  various  forms  of  metre,  its 
recurrent  emphasis,  its  various  pauses,  its  divisions 
into  stanza  and  verse,  and  its  modern  emphatic  iden- 
tities of  terminating  sound,  are  all  originally  expres- 
sive of  the  varieties  of  kind  and  degree  of  emotion. 
Upon  this  point  all  philosophy  of  metre,  all  criticism 
of  the  form  of  poetry,  is  to  be  based. 

True  it  is,  as  we  said  in  reference  to  poetic  lan- 
guage, that  use,  and  the  indifference  that  comes  of 
use,  may  degrade  forms  which  were  originally  the 
spontaneous  expression  of  plastic  emotion  into  stereo- 
typed moulds  which  any  dullard,  blind  and  crippled, 
can  fill  with  his  clay.  The  very  cause  why  genuine 
poetry  is,  perhaps,  a  rarer  accomplishment  in  ages 
of  high,  or,  at  least,  general  culture,  than  in  earlier 
and  ruder  ages,  is  precisely  the  reason  why  we  have 
so  many  writers  of  smooth  verse  who  cannot  un- 
derstand why  critics  will  refuse  them  the  title  of 
poets.  Poetical  language  has  become  so  common, 
that  while  it  is  within  anybody's  capacity,  the  diffi- 
culty becomes  greater  either  to  select  words  not 
hackneyed  that  express  poetical  ideas  so  well  as  the 
current  words  and  phrases,  or  to  make  these  phrases 


206  H8SATS. 

do  their  original  work  of  presenting  real  living  ob- 
jects, and  not  merely  abstract  names  and  conventional 
signs.  And  the  metrical  forms  have  done  duty  so 
often,  and  the  ear  has  become  so  habituated  to  their 
music,  and  at  the  same  time  so  dull  to  their  charms, 
that  it  requires  at  once  a  higher  inspiration  than  ever 
to  write  verse  from  a  spontaneous  impulse,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  a  mechanical  knack,  and  finer  art 
than  ever  to  cause  the  reader  by  means  of  verse  to 
share  that  rhythmical  condition  of  emotion  which 
alone  justifies  to  him  what  is,  otherwise,  a  sense- 
less artifice,  and  a  simple  hindrance  to  clearness  of 
thought  and  expression. 

We  have  thus  briefly  sketched  the  outline  of  our 
own  theory  of  poetry  in  the  general — the  theory  on 
which,  in  our  opinion,  sound  criticism  must  be  based 
— and  on  which,  therefore,  we  profess  to  base  our 
own  criticism.  The  principles  we  have  enunciated 
may  be  thus  summed  up.  A  poem  must  present 
its  subject  as  an  organic  whole,  which,  though  made 
up  of  parts  common,  it  may  be,  to  an  infinite  variety 
of  other  wholes,  is  itself  distinct  from  every  other 
whole,  and  is  recognisable  at  once  for  what  it  is,  an 
individual  not  identical  with  any  other  individual  of 
the  same  general  character.  Any  presentation  of  a 
subject  that  falls  short  of  this  tends  either  towards 


POETRT  AND  CRITICISM.  207 

scientific  abstraction  or  towards  the  utterly  inarti- 
culate, that  which  neither  intellect  nor  imagination 
have  firmly  grasped  or  clearly  apprehended.  This 
is  the  principle  we  shall  apply  to  the  compositions 
we  are  called  to  judge,  in  deciding  on  their  ima- 
ginative power.  As  to  questions  of  form,  we  have 
already  stated  that  rhythm,  metre,  and  all  that 
constitutes  the  mode  of  expression  rather  than  the 
substance — though  in  art  it  is  hazardous  to  draw 
hard  lines  of  distinction  between  form  and  sub- 
stance, where  form  is  not  conventional — are  spon- 
taneous natural  signs  of  the  singer's  emotion,  and, 
as  regards  the  reader,  at  once  an  index  to  the  singer's 
intensity  of  poetic  temperature — a  kind  of  metronome 
— and  the  medium  through  which  the  same  heat 
of  emotion  is  kindled  in  the  reader,  and  he  is  infused 
with  the  passion  as  well  as  the  imaginative  per- 
ception of  the  subject.  All,  then,  we  have  to  ask 
ourselves  in  reference  to  the  form  of  any  particular 
poem  is,  whether  it  does  so  express  the  emotion  of 
the  writer,  and  what  quality  and  degree  of  emotion 
it  expresses — that  of  a  great  soul  raised  to  the  height 
of  its  subject,  or  of  a  little  soul  vainly  striving  to 
warm  its  thin  blood,  but  puny,  starved,  and  shiver- 
ing, even  in  presence  of  the  central  fires  of  the 
universe.      To  any  poem  which  will  stand  the  test 


208  msATS. 

of  the  application  of  these  principles  the  tribute  of 
our  hearty  admiration  is  due,  and  will  be  joyfully 
paid.  What  will  not  stand  this  test  is  not  poetry 
at  all;  and  in  masquerading  under  the  poetical  cos- 
tume, it  is  tolerably  sure  to  lose  any  worth  or 
attractiveness  of  sincere  human  speech,  as  the  voice 
we  may  delight  to  hear  in  its  own  natural  tones  of 
conversation  ceases  to  charm  and  becomes  painfully 
ridiculous  in  attempting  the  accomplishment  of  sing- 
ing, for  which  nature  has  not  adapted  its  organization. 

Fraser's  Maffazine, 
Feb.  1855. 


TEE  ANGEL  IN  THE  MOUSE.  209 


THE    ANGEL   IN   THE    HOUSE. 

A  PERSON  of  cynical  temper  is  likely  to  note  with 
emphasis,  and  with  the  grim  pleasure  that  testifies  his 
perception  of  a  fact  his  humour  can  assimilate  and 
grow  hy,   a  peculiarity  in   the  mode  which  poets 
have  almost  uniformly  adopted  in  their  treatment  of 
love.     These  interpreters  of  life  would  by  no  means 
support  the  cynic  in  his  estimate  of  that  passion; 
they  have,  on  the  contrary,  exhausted  heaven  and 
earth  for  similitudes  by  which  to  express  their  sense 
of  the  beauty  and  worth  of  women,  of  the  woes  of 
slighted  and  the  raptures  of  successful  lovers,  of  the 
agonies  and  ecstacies,  the  torments  and  the  blisses, 
which  women  are  capable  of  exciting  in  the  hearts 
of  men,  and  of  the  comparative  poverty  and  worth- 
lessness  of  all  the  delights  of  life  weighed  against 
one  hour  of  the  transports  of  requited  passion,  or 
the  calm  of  satisfied  affection.     They  may,  moreover, 
be  credited  with  a  degree  of  sincerity  in  this  appre- 

P 


210  USSATS. 

ciation,  which  it  would  he  difficult  to  accord  to  their 
tuneful  raptures  on  many  of  the  other  emotional 
elements  of  human  life.  Poets  are  unquestionably 
bom  with  fathers  and  mothers,  brothers  and  sisters 
occasionally,  and  by  chance  aunts  and  uncles;  but 
except  the  jEneid,  King  Lear,  and  Antigone,  we 
remember  no  great  poem  in  which  the  natural  af- 
fections of  kindred  have  been  among  the  leading 
motives.  Poets,  too,  have  countries,  with  institutions 
and  beliefs,  unless  Schiller's  theory  be  true,  which 
assigns  them  the  clouds  for  dwelling-place  and 
domain;  but  those  who  have  tuned  their  harps  to 
great  national  themes,  to  the  foundation  of  empires, 
the  formation  of  civil  society,  the  triumphs  of  liberty 
and  order,  the  origin  of  supernatural  beliefs,  and  the 
growth  of  religious  worship,  belong,  so  far  as  they 
have  been  successful,  to  a  remote  past,  and  are  the 
study  of  scholars  rather  than  the  delight  of  the 
people,  while  their  modern  imitators  have  made  the 
very  name  of  epic  a  bugbear  to  all  moderately 
sensible  and  candid  minds.  In  fact,  success  in  the 
treatment  of  subjects  disconnected  with  love  has  been 
most  exceptional;  and  even  the  greatest  poets,  who 
have  looked  abroad  upon  human  life,  and  have  found 
it  poetical  throughout  its  whole  extent  and  under 
every  variety  of  circumstance,  have  felt  the  attraction 


TEE  ANOEL  IN  TEE  EOUSE.  211 

of  love  SO  irresistible,  that  they  have  shot  its  golden 
threads  to  illumine  the  darkest  and  enliven  the 
dullest  parts  of  their  microcosmic  web,  and  to  bring 
down  upon  the  whole  surface  the  sheen  of  heaven's 
light ;  while  this  universal  passion  has  alone  by  itself 
sufficed  to  make  common  men  poets  for  the  moment, 
to  raise  minor  poets  to  unwonted  richness  of  thought 
and  imagery,  and  has  brightened  the  faces  of  the 
great  masters  of  song.  By  its  light,  when  poetry 
and  the  world  were  young,  blind  Homer  read  the 
tale  of  Troy ;  and  through  a  vista  of  three  thousand 
years,  amid  myriads  of  armed  warriors,  the  eye  still 
follows  Briseis  as  she  leaves  with  reluctant  feet  and 
reverting  gaze  the  tent  where  captivity  had  found 
a  solace,  and  the  stern  master  was  softened  into  the 
lover ;  still  above  the  din  of  battle,  above  the  grave 
turmoil  of  debate,  we  listen  to  the  fierce  Achilles 
moaning  for  his  lost  mistress ;  the  charms  of  Helen 
are  more  to  us  than  the  wisdom  of  Athene  and 
the  counsels  of  Nestor;  and  the  sympathies  of  all 
but  a  few  extremely  right-minded  people  are  through- 
out with  the  Trojans,  and  would  be  with  Paris,  but 
that  he  is  a  downright  coward,  and  the  world  instinct- 
ively adopts  the  maxim, —  . 

None  but  the  brave 
Deserve  the  fair. 

p2 


212  ESSAYS. 

Society — and  poetry  with  it — had  degenerated  be- 
tween the  birth  of  the  epic  full-grown  and  full-armed, 
like  its  own  Athene,  from  the  head  of  Homer,  and 
the  time  when  ^schylus  slaughtered  Persians  at 
Salamis,  and  exhibited  their  ghosts  upon  the  stage 
at  Athens.  The  forte  of  the  Athenian  drama  cer- 
tainly does  not  lie  in  the  representation  of  love.  But 
then  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Attic  stage  was 
eminently  the  domain  of  stateliness  and  convention- 
ality, that  waxen  masks  frozen  into  one  unchanging 
no-expression,  to  which  even  Charles  Kean  can  only 
feebly  approach,  would  have  been  an  inadequate 
instrument  for  rendering  so  eminently  versatile  and 
variable  a  passion  as  love,  even  reflected  in  the 
countenance  of  an  ancient  philosopher  or  a  modern 
mathematician.  Besides,  the  construction  of  the 
mouthpiece  of  these  masks,  to  serve  for  a  speaking- 
trumpet,  could  only  have  illustrated  one  rather  curious 
scene,  belonging  more  to  comedy  than  tragedy — a 
gentleman  proposing  to  a  lady  who  is  stone-deaf. 
Fancy  E-omeo,  major  humane  by  ten  inches  of  cork 
sole,  sweeping  along  the  stage  with  a  drawing-room 
train  of  dowager  dimensions,  and  bawling,  '  I  would 
I  were  a  glove  upon  that  hand,'  through  the  sort  of 
instrument  with  which  the  captain  of  the  Bellercyphon 
speaks  the  Arrogant  half  a  mile  off.     Or,  still  worse. 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  213 

Juliet  sighing  through  the  same  instrument,  'O, 
Romeo!  O,  gentle  Romeo!'  and  all  that  wondrous 
play  of  passion  not  once  flushing  up  in  the  cheek  or 
kindling  in  the  eye.  But  the  ugliest  old  hag  that 
ever  rode  a  broomstick  would  be  less  repellent  of  the 
gentler  emotions  than  an  automaton  Venus,  made  to 
speak  through  a  vox  humana  organ  pipe.  In  short, 
without  insisting  upon  the  social  circumstances  of 
Athenian  women,  and  the  peculiar  notions  that  re- 
gulated Athenian  tragedy,  these  mere  mechanical 
conditions  under  which  the  tragedians  wrote,  are 
sufficient  to  account  for  the  insignificant  part  assigned 
to  love  in  their  compositions,  though  their  choruses 
abound  in  passages  of  the  highest  lyrical  beauty  and 
fervour,  which  indicate  that  the  passion  was  still  as 
powerful  as  ever  to  sway  the  feelings  and  excite  the 
imagination.  When  the  stage  became  again  a  mirror 
of  actual  contemporaneous  life  without  disguise,  as  in 
the  later  comedy  of  Menander  and  his  Latin  imitator 
Terence,  we  find  that  even  the  mechanical  obstacles 
before  mentioned  were  not  so  insuperable  but  that 
women  play  an  important  part  in  these  dramas, 
and  love  becomes  a  prominent  motive  and  a  principal 
attraction.  Pindar  unfortunately  gave  himself  up  to 
the  turf,  the  prize-ring,  and  a  curious  kind  of  Pagan 
high-church  hagiology,  much  as  if  the  editor  of  BelVs 


214  USSATS. 

Life,  the  author  of  Boxiana,  and  the  poet  of  the 
Christian  Year,  were  all  three  gentlemen  in  one. 
The  universal  human  vein  shows  itself,  however,  here 
and  tliere,  with  a  strange  gleam  of  tenderness,  in 
stray  biographical  allusions  and  moral  reflections, 
interspersed  with  the  main  subject  in  hand,  which  is 
always  to  celebrate  some  Derby  event  of  that  old 
time,  or  to  trace  up  the  lineage  of  Hellenic  game- 
chickens  and  White-headed  Bobs  to  Hercules.  In 
Theocritus,  again,  love  is  *the  main  haunt  and 
region'  of  the  song,  and  that  song  about  the  sweetest 
whose  echo  still  sounds  over  the  waters  of  Time  from 
the  dim  shore  of  ancient  Hellas.  Then  if  we  come 
somewhat  nearer  to  our  own  times,  and  to  poets  who 
have  influenced  modem  literature — at  least,  up  to  a 
very  recent  period — more  than  their  greater  Hellenic 
brethren  have  done,  the  names  of  Ovid  and  Horace 
suffice  to  carry  on  the  succession.  Horace  certainly 
wrote  plenty  of  good  moral  sentiment  and  patriotism 
of  the  sort  possible  under  a  despotism  of  the  modem 
French  type ;  but  he  will  always  be  for  us  the  little 
fat  man  who  loved  and  lived  with  various  Lalages, 
and  made  them,  we  feel  perfectly  assured,  of  more 
account  in  his  existence  than  the  great  'nephew  of 
his  uncle,'  his  prime  minister  Maecenas,  or  even, 
we  fear,  than  the  Palatine  Apollo  himself,  and  that 


TEE  ANGEL  IN  THE  SOUSE.  215 

Jupiter  Optimus  Maxinms  wlio  half  frightened  the  little 
sceptic  with  summer  thunder.  Even  the  grandiloquent 
Virgil  cannot  get  through  his  epic  without  a  strong 
spice  of  love,  and  pious  ^neas  vindicates  for  himself 
the  English  as  well  as  the  Latin  force  of  the  stereo- 
typed epithet  hy  hehaving  like  a  scoundrel  to  a 
woman,  and  sneaking  off  without  even  saying  good- 
bye, or  leaving  a  christening-cup  for  the  possible 
Tyrian  lulus.  That  episode  has  saved  the  ^neid 
from  becoming  a  mere  scholar's  poem,  in  spite  of  its 
magnificent  versification.  And  when  a  greater  than 
Virgil  took  up  his  mantle,  was  it  not — by  permission 
of  the  allegorists,  be  it  spoken — by  the  woman  whom 
he  loved  that  Dante  was  guided  to  the  Heaven  of 
Heavens — to  the  presence  of  the  Ineffable?  Nay, 
was  it  not  in  reality  under  her  guidance, 

Donna  beata  e  bella 
Tal  che  di  comandare  io  la  richiesi, — 

as  her  messenger  says  of  her,  that  the  poet  ventured 
all  through  that  mystic  voyage?  by  her  goodness, 
sweetness,  and  beauty  alone  that  his  heart  was  sus- 
tained amid  the  wrongs,  the  torments,  the  purgatorial 
discipline  of  life  ?  by  the  light  of  love  alone  that  life 
became  to  him  tolerable  and  intelligible?  And  in 
spite  of  his  stem  theology,  with  its 

Lasciate  ogni  speranza  voi  ch'  entrate, 


216  MSAYS. 

is  it  not  just  amid  hell's  fiercest  torments  that  love — 
the  most  passionate,  the  most  sensuous  love  of  man 
and  woman — shows  itself  to  him  mightier  than  the 
torment,  outbraving  despair,  and  stronger  in  its  own 
simple  strength  than  Hell  and  Fate,  and  that  terrible 
foreknowledge  of  an  eternity  without  hope?  It  is 
needless  to  pursue  a  topic  so  familiar  through  the 
great  names  of  modem  poetry.  Only  conceive  this 
passion  of  love  blotted  out  from  the  pages  of  our  own 
first-class  poets,  from  Chaucer,  from  Spenser,  from 
Shakspeare,  from  Milton — what  a  sky  without  its  sun 
would  remain !  what  an  earth  without  its  verdure,  its 
streams,  and  its  flowers !  Something,  no  doubt,  there 
would  be  still  to  attract  us  in  the  manner-painting, 
the  grand  thoughts,  the  vivid  natural  descriptions ; 
but  even  these  would  have  lost  a  charm  that  now 
often  insensibly  mingles  with  them  and  enhances 
them.  And  the  poor  minors !  where  would  they  be  ? 
All  of  them  in  the  same  category  that  Drayton's 
Polyolbion,  Browne's  Britannia's  Pastorals,  Dave- 
nant's  Gondibert,  were  in  before  Southey  and  Co. 
fanned  a  small  flame  of  antiquarian  poetic  enthu- 
siasm, and  are  in  again  now  that  small  flame  has 
gone  out.  Here  and  there  some  lyric,  short  and 
tersely  expressed,  would  survive  in  popular  esteem, 
especially  if  married  to  fine  music;   but  the  bulk 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  217 

would  float  in  undistinguished  heaps  by  Lethe's 
wharf,  and  scientific  cultivators  of  literature  would 
resort  to  them,  as  agriculturists  do  to  the  guano 
stores,  to  fertilize  dry  brains,  and  astonish  the  world 
with  spasmodic  crops  of  lectures  on  historical  de- 
velopment of  poetry,  and  so  forth.  If  we  go  on  to 
English  poetry  since  the  Revolution,  we  find  the 
same,  or  even  greater,  predominance  of  this  single 
element  of  emotion.  With  the  exception  of  a  few 
reflective  and  satirical  poems — that  is,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  versified  sermons  and  essays  borrowing 
some  of  the  ornaments  of  poetiy  proper — where  is  the 
really  popular  poem  that  does  not  depend  for  its  main 
charm  on  its  pictures  of  love?  What  would  even 
Walter  Scott  himself  be  without  it  ?  Cowper  indeed 
is  a  real  exception,  so  far  as  his  poetry  does  not 
come  under  the  head  of  reflective  or  satirical,  as  most 
of  it  does ;  but  Cowper  was  no  less  exceptional  as 
a  man  than  as  a  poetj  he  fell  early  in  life  into 
hypochondria  and  confirmed  valetudinarianism,  and 
was  anything  but  a  normal  specimen  of  the  warm- 
blooded male  mammal  whose  differentia  is  poetry- 
writing.  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  Coleridge,  have 
written  the  finest  poetry  of  passion  since  the  Eliza- 
bethans ;  Moore  wrote  little  else  than  sentimental  love 
poetry  J   Campbell's    Gertrude  stands  highest  of  his 


218  USSAYS. 

long  poems ;  and  if  Wordsworth  thought  to  wield  a 
poet's  influence  while  he  regarded  the  poet's  mightiest 
spell  as  a  Circean  drug,  has  not  the  result  been  that 
he  is  more  respected  than  loved,  almost  universally 
acknowledged  to  be  a  great  teacher,  but  a  heavy  writer, 
and  that  the  poems  and  passages  of  his  which  are  the 
greatest  favourites  are  precisely  those,  like  Laodamia, 
Ruth,  She  was  a  Phantom j  &c.,  in  which  he  has 
mingled  this  spell,  or  composed  his  enchantment 
entirely  of  it  ?  We  will  not  say  a  word  here  of  Mr. 
Tennyson,  for  his  name  alone  at  once  brings  to  the 
mind  some  of  the  most  delicious  love  poetry  in  the 
English  language,  however  much  noble  poetry  of 
another  kind  it  may  also  recal. 

The  cynic,  then,  with  whom  we  started,  has  cer- 
tainly no  great  reason  to  pique  himself  upon  the 
support  his  opinions  obtain  from  the  poets,  so  far 
as  his  and  their  estimate  of  love  are  brought  into 
direct  comparison.  But  the  fact  that  he  would  not 
fail  to  notice  as  characteristic  in  the  poetical  estimate, 
and  supporting  his  own  opinion  rather  than  theirs 
of  the  worth  of  women  and  of  the  influence  of  love 
upon  human  happiness,  is  that,  with  a  very  few 
exceptions,  the  poets  expend  their  raptures  upon 
the  period  of  courtship  rather  than  of  marriage,  upon 
the  pursuit  rather  than  the  attainment,  as  if  a  woman 


TEE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  219 

were  like  a  fox,  precious  only  for  the  excitement 
of  the  chase,  worthless  when  won.  Or  if  they 
venture  at  all  beyond  the  wedding-day,  it  is  too 
often  to  treat  marriage — according  to  that  terrible 
mot  of  Sophie  Arnauld — as  the  sacrament  of  adultery. 
A  vast  quantity  of  literature  turning  on  this  crime 
is  written  indeed  in  the  spirit  of  that  typical  young 
Parisian  who,  seeing  an  injured  husband  on  the  stage 
shoot  his  wife's  seducer,  was  heard  to  mutter  to 
himself,  cochon  de  mari !  And  our  cynical  friend 
might  go  over  nearly  the  same  range  of  poetry  that 
we  have  taken,  and  would  show  us  that  Briseis 
was  not  the  wife,  but  the  mistress,  of  Achilles ;  that 
Helen's  husband  was  not  Paris,  but  Menelaus.  He 
would  add  that  Odysseus  only  sighed  for  Penelope 
while  he  was  away  from  her,  enduring  moil  and 
toil  in  the  trenches  before  Troy,  and  remembering 
the  substantial  comforts  of  his  island  home,  as  well 
as  its  sentimental  attractions ;  moreover,  that  as  soon 
as  he  returned  he  was  tired  of  his  wife,  and  finally 
could  not  stand  domestic  felicity  any  longer,  but 
proceeded  on  a  voyage  with  an  extremely  vague 
destination,  from  which  he  took  good  care  never  to 
return.  The  Greek  tragedians,  too,  would  furnish 
our  friend  with  ample  materials  for  his  humour. 
Though  there  is  little  enough  in  their  plays  of  that 


220  USSAYS. 

love  which  is  the  flower  of  life,  making  youth 
glorious,  manhood  calm  and  strong,  and  age  peaceful 
and  serene,  there  is  enough  and  to  spare  of  all 
the  foul  and  terrible  results  that  belong  to  the  cor- 
ruption of  this  consummate  excellence.  We  should 
hear  of  Clytemnestra  and  Phaedra,  of  Deianira  and 
Medea;  be  told  probably  that  the  Furies  were  re- 
presented as  women ;  that  mythology,  the  mother 
of  poetry,  began  and  continued  in  this  key,  having 
little  to  say  of  faithful  wives  and  constant  lovers, 
but  delighting  in  vagrant  loves,  in  ladies  celestial 
and  semi-celestial,  all  acting  with  the  largest  liber- 
ality. We  fear,  too,  that  the  lovers  in  the  Pastorals 
of  Theocritus  had  not  been  to  the  register's  office; 
and  Queen  Dido  could  no  more  have  been  received 
at  Queen  Victoria's  court  than  Queen  Isabella  the 
Second.  The  loves  of  Ovid  and  Horace  were  little 
better,  it  is  to  be  feared,  than  that  poor  Violetta 
at  whom  the  great  Times  has  been  letting  off  such 
tremendously  overcharged  artillery.  Dante,  too,  un- 
fortunately had  a  wife  and  children  at  home  all 
the  time  he  was  faking  that  mystic  journey  under 
the  protection  of  the  donna  heata  e  bella;  and  Pe- 
trarch's Laura,  par  excellence,  the  type  of  a  poet's 
mistress,  was  another  man's  wife.  The  ladies  of 
the  present  day  would  scarcely  thank  Chaucer  for 


TEE  ANGEL  IN  TEE  EOUSE.  221 

his  portraiture  of  Griselda;  and  the  Wife  of  Bath, 
which,  it  is  said,  Dr.  Doddridge  used  to  read  aloud  to 
the  young  misses  of  his  pious  circle,  cannot  be  con- 
sidered on  the  whole  complimentary  to  the  fairer  half 
of  mankind.  The  only  thoroughly  charming  wife 
whom  Shakspeare  represents,  was  married  to  a  black 
man,  and  throttled  by  him  in  the  honeymoon  or  shortly 
after.  Spenser's  idolatry  was  paid  to  a  maiden 
queen,  on  the  very  ground  of  her  maidenhood. 
Milton's  Eve — no  less,  the  cynic  would  say,  from 
the  poet's  personal  experience  of  married  life  than 
from  the  historical  necessity — ruined  her  husband, 
and  brought  upon  the  whole  world  sin,  woe,  and 
death.  Our  'Augustan'  poets  were  not,  as  a  class, 
sentimental  men.  Swift,  Pope,  and  Addison  are 
three  persons  as  thoroughly  desillustonnes  as  M.  de 
Rochefoucauld  himself;  and  Matthew  Prior  turned 
for  such  feminine  consolations  as  he  needed  to  the 
Lalages  of  Drury  Lane.  Byron,  Scott,  Shelley, 
Keats,  all  paint  courtship,  not  marriage  j  if  Bums 
wrote  John  Anderson  my  Jo,  Johuj  and  The  Cotter's 
Saturday  Nighty  he  wrote  Amang  the  Rigs  of  Barley 
with  quite  as  much  gusto,  and  modulated  into  that 
key  a  great  deal  oftener  than  into  any  other.  Mr. 
Tennyson  has  indeed  written  the  Miller^s  Daughter, 
and  the  close  of  the  Princess ;  but  we  should  be  re- 


222  -ESSAYS. 

minded  that  the  latter  is  merely  a  lover  s  anticipation, 
his  ideal  picture  of  what  married  life  should  he,  and 
that  the  miller's  daughter's  husband  is  not  a  strikingly- 
interesting  person,  if  he  be  not  to  be  called  decidedly- 
imbecile,  in  spite  of  the  two  charming  songs  of  which 
he  claims  the  authorship. 

The  cynic  has  unquestionably  a  strong  prima 
facte  case.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that  wedded 
love  has  been  almost  uniformly  rejected,  as  offering 
no  available  material  for  high  poetry,  except  in  its 
corruption,  as  a  theme  for  tragedy;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  satirical  and  comic  writers  have  ex- 
hausted ridicule  and  malignity  in  depicting  the  vices, 
the  absurdities,  and  the  mean  miseries,  of  people  who 
are  ill-matched  in  marriage.  As  we  believe  that 
the  elements  of  high  poetry  exist  wherever  human 
hearts  beat  with  true  vital  heat;  and  as  we  further- 
more believe  that  the  emotional  and  truly  human 
life  of  a  man  and  woman,  so  far  from  being  over 
when,  from  lovers,  they  become  husband  and  wife, 
then  only  begins  to  attain  its  full  growth  and  ca- 
pacity of  bearing  fruit  and  flower  of  perennial  beauty 
and  fragrance,  we  are  tempted  to  inquire  into  some 
of  the  causes  of  this  onesidedness  which  we  have 
charged  the  poets  with,  and  to  indicate  briefly  some 
of  the  real  poetical  capabilities  of  wedded  love,  and 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  223 

the  sort  of  treatment  they  require  in  being  wrought 
into  actual  poems. 

The  first  and  most  obvious  temptation  to  limit 
the  poetical  representation  of  love  to  the  period  before 
marriage,  lies  in  the  fact  that  this  period  seems  spon- 
taneously to  supply  that  heginning^  middle^  and  end 
which  narrative  or  dramatic  poems  are  truly  enough 
supposed  to  require.  Courtship,  in  ordinary  cases, 
divides  itself  into  two  phases,  the  termination  of  each 
of  which  is  a  point  of  definite  interest,  towards  which 
all  the  incidents,  all  the  talk,  all  the  surprises, 
suspensions,  diflSculties,  and  triumphs,  which  make 
up  the  plot  of  a  love-story,  are  directly  subordinated. 
A  man  falls  in  love  with  a  woman,  and  has  to  win 
his  way  by  degrees  more  or  less  rapid  and  eventful, 
to  her  affection;  this  is  the  first  phase,  rich,  as 
experience  proves,  in  elements  of  poetical  pleasure, 
which  all  men  and  women  are  capable  of  enjoying 
without  effort.  Then  follows  the  period,  richer  still 
in  all  the  materials  for  varied  incident,  in  which 
the  social  arrangements  come  in  to  interpose  obstacles 
between  the  lover  and  his  mistress,  and  to  keep  the 
interest  of  the  reader  or  spectator  always  on  the 
stretch.  The  advantage  is  beyond  all  computation 
which  this  natural  framework,  made  ready  to  his 
hand,  confers  upon  the  poet  who   seeks  mainly  to 


224  ussATS. 

amuse  his  audience  by  a  series  of  connected  occur- 
rences, in  each  of  which  the  least  cultivated,  the  least 
thoughtful,  the  least  generous,  can  take  an  interest 
that  demands  no  strain,  scarcely  any  activity,  of 
the  imagination,  the  heart,  or  the  reason.  And 
the  free,  vigorous  exercise  of  the  imagination  is 
so  rare  among  mankind,  that  it  is  little  wonder 
that  poets  have  been  content  with  making  their  ap- 
peals to  sympathies  that  are  sure  to  have  been  familiar 
to  the  hearts  of  their  audience  at  some  time  or  other 
in  the  actual  experience  of  life,  and  need  but  the 
faintest  outline  of  reality  in  the  representation  to 
awaken  them  again.  But  though  it  must  be  allowed 
that  the  love  of  husband  and  wife  offers  no  such 
obvious  aud  facile  series  of  connected  incidents, 
with  well-marked  divisions,  and  all  tending,  by  due 
gradations  of  interest,  to  one  event;  and  though  in 
proportion  as  the  interest  of  poetry  is  made  to  turn 
less  on  striking  outward  circumstances,  a  heavier 
demand  is  made  upon  the  imagination  of  both  writer 
and  reader,  and  a  mere  passive  reception  of  familiar 
thoughts  and  feelings  becomes  no  longer  sufficient 
for  the  enjoyment  of  the  poem ;  yet  this  only  amounts 
to  saying  that  poetry  has  some  higher  function  than 
to  amuse  idle  people,  some  nobler  office  in  cultivating 
the    heart,   and   enlarging  the  range   of  the   inner 


THE  ANGEL  IN  TEE  SOUSE.  225 

life,  than  can  be  attributed  to  it  so  long  as  it  merely 
strikes  one  chord  of  feeling,  or  at  best  plays  over  and 
over  again,  from  the  beginning  of  time  to  its  close, 
the  same  old  tune  in  diflferent  keys  and  on  different 
instruments.  It  is,  indeed,  quite  true  that  it  would 
be  impossible  to  mark  the  commencement  of  any 
poem,  which  should  deal  with  ordinary  wedded  love 
as  its  main  subject,  by  an  event  as  definite  as  the 
first  meeting  of  a  man  with  his  future  mistress,  or 
a  feeling  as  definite,  as  distinct  from  his  previous 
state  of  mind,  as  the  fijrst  awakening  of  the  passion 
that  is  to  rule  his  life  henceforward  through  the  story. 
The  same  remark  applies  as  forcibly  to  the  want  of 
any  event  equally  definite  with  marriage  to  serve  for 
a  termination,  unless  all  such  poems  were  to  have 
a  mournful  close,  and  end  with  a  deathbed,  or  fall 
into  the  old  tragic  vein  of  seduction,  adultery,  and 
murder.  We  must  candidly  consent  to  give  up  that 
source  of  interest  which  lies  in  the  changes  produced 
upon  the  outward  relation,  upon  the  union  or  sepa- 
ration of  outward  existence  between  the  two  persons 
whose  inner  relations,  whose  mutual  influence  upon 
each  other,  and  affection  towards  each  other,  are  by 
supposition  the  subject  of  the  poem.  Instead  of 
watching  the  formation  of  a  double  star,  and  having 
all  our  interest  concentrated  upon  the  critical  moment 


226  lESSAYS. 

when  the  attraction  of  one  for  the  other  finally  draws 
them  within  the  inevitable  vortex  in  which  they  are 
henceforth  eternally  to  revolve,  we  have  to  explore 
the  laws  and  witness  the  phenomena  of  their  mutual 
action,  henceforward  bound  by  a  limit  in  the  pre- 
servation of  which  consists  the  whole  peculiarity,  the 
whole  interest,  of  this  class  of  objects.  Or,  if  we 
may  be  allowed  another  illustration  from  physical 
science,  instead  of  having  to  deal  with  a  problem 
mainly  dynamical,  we  advance  into  the  higher  because 
more  complex  and  mysterious  region  of  chemistry, 
and  are  dealing,  not  with  the  mutual  action  of  distinct 
bodies,  but  with  the  composition  of  bodies,  with  the 
changes  their  constituent  atoms  tmdergo  by  com- 
bination, and  by  the  action  of  the  subtle  elements — 
heat,  light,  electricity,  and  so  forth.  Will  any  one  deny 
that  the  analogy  is  a  true  analogy?  And  if  it  be 
so,  is  it  not  mere  sloth  and  dulness,  mere  want  of 
subtle  imagination,  of  delicate  sensibility,  that  can 
complain  of  want  of  incident,  and  consequent  want 
of  interest,  in  the  drama  of  wedded  love?  There 
can  be  no  want  of  incident  so  long  as  character  in- 
fluences fortune,  and  fortune  character ;  so  long  as  the 
destinies  of  human  beings  in  this  world  are  carved 
out  by  their  virtues  and  their  vices ;  so  long  as  wisdom 
and  goodness  sweeten  the  bitterest  cup  of  adversity ; 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  227 

SO  long  as  folly  and  wickedness  infuse  gall  into  the 
bowl  of  nectar  which  fortune  hands  her  favourites 
in  jewelled  gold.  It  is  the  stupidity  of  poets  which 
can  see  no  incident  in  married  life  so  long  as  the 
marriage  vow  is  kept  to  the  letter  in  the  grossest 
interpretation  of  that  letter;  and  which  has  for  the 
most  part  induced  them,  when  they  have  introduced 
married  people  at  all,  to  use  marriage  to  give  a 
spicier  piquancy  to  intrigue,  or  a  darker  glow  to 
hatred  and  revenge. 

But  this  notion  of  want  of  incident  unfitting 
married  love  to  be  a  subject  for  poetry  is  closely 
connected  with  another  notion  still  more  false,  vulgar, 
and  immoral.  The  romance  of  life  is  over,  it  is  said, 
with  marriage;  nothing  like  marriage,  is  the  con- 
genial reply,  for  destroying  illusions  and  nonsense. 
In  which  notable  specimens  of  '  the  wisdom  of  many 
men  expressed  in  the  wit  of  one,'  there  are  two  remark- 
able assertions  involved.  The  first  is  that  love  is  an 
illusion;  the  second,  that  marriage  destroys  it.  We 
may  concede  to  the  wisdom  of  the  market-place  thus 
much  of  truth,  that  the  love  which  marriage  destroys 
is  unquestionably  an  illusion.  We  may  also  concede 
to  it  this  further  truth,  that  the  love  of  husband 
and  wife  is  no  more  the  love  of  the  man  and  woman 
in  the  days  of  their  courtship,  than  the  blossom  of 
q2 


228  ussATS. 

the  peach  is  the  peach,  or  the  green  shoots  of  corn 
that  peep  above  the  snows  of  February  are  the 
harvest  that  waves  its  broad  billows  of  red  and  gold 
in  the  autumn  sun.  If  indeed  there  are  persons  so 
silly  as  to  dream,  in  their  days  of  courtship,  that  life 
can  be  an  Arcadian  paradise,  where  caution,  self- 
restraint,  and  self-denial  are  needless;  where  in- 
exhaustible blisses  fall  like  dew  on  human  lilies  that 
have  only  to  be  lovely ;  a  world  from  the  conception 
of  which  pain  and  imperfection,  sin,  discipline,  and 
moral  growth  are  excluded,  marriage  undoubtedly 
does  destroy  this  illusion,  as  life  would  destroy  it 
were  marriage  out  of  the  question.  If,  too,  attracted 
originally  to  each  other  by  some  slight  and  inde- 
finable charm,  by  some  chord  of  sympathy  vibrating 
in  harmony  at  a  moment's  accidental  touch,  often  by 
the  mere  force  of  the  tendency  at  a  particular  age  to 
what  the  great  Florentine  calls — 

Amor  che  al  cor  gentil  ratto  s'apprende, 
Amor  che  a  nullo  amato  amar  perdona, 

two  young  persons  fancy  that  this  subtle  charm,  this 
mysterious  attraction,  is  endowed  with  eternal  strength 
to  stand  the  shocks  of  time,  the  temptations  of  fresh 
attractions,  the  more  fatal  because  more  continual  sap 
of  unresting  egotism,  ever  active  to  throw  down  the 


TEE  ANGEL  IN  TEE  EOUSE.  229 

outworks  and  undennine  the  citadel  of  love;  and 
trusting  to  it  alone,  think  that  wedded  happiness  can 
be  maintained  without  self-discipline,  mutual  esteem 
and  forbearance ;  without  the  charity  which  covers 
the  defects  it  silently  studies  to  remove ;  without  the 
wisdom  and  the  mutual  understanding  of  character 
to  which  profound  and  patient  love  can  alone  attain 
— this  is  another  illusion  which  marriage  will  destroy. 
What  is,  however,  generally  meant  by  the  sayings 
we  have  quoted,  is,  that  there  is  nothing  like  marriage 
for  taking  the  passion  out  of  people,  for  taking  out 
of  them  all  disinterested  aspirations,  all  noble  hopes 
and  fears,  all  delicacy  of  sentiment,  all  purity  of 
mind,  all  warmth  of  heart — nothing  like  marriage 
for  making  them  see,  in  respectable  money-making, 
in  respectable  dinners,  respectable  furniture,  carriages, 
and  so  forth,  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  human 
existence.  So  far  as  marriage  in  our  actual  world 
realizes  these  noble  predications; — and,  so  far  as  it 
does,  the  result  is  mainly  owing  to  the  miserable 
views  of  life  and  its  purposes  which  society  instils 
into  its  youth  of  both  sexes  ;  being  still,  as  in  Plato's 
time,  the  sophist  par  excellence^  of  which  all  indi- 
vidual talking  and  writing  sophists  are  but  feeble 
copies — just  so  far  is  married  love,  if  the  phrase  is 
to  be  so  outrageously  perverted,  utterly  unfit  for  any 


230  :ESSArs. 

high,  poetry,  except  a  great  master  of  tragedy  should 
take  in  hand  to  render  into  language  the  too  common 
tragi-comedy  of  a  human  soul  metamorphosing  itself 
into  a  muckworm.  But  surely  every  one  can  look 
round  among  his  acquaintance,  and  find  marriages 
that  are  not  after  this  type,  marriages  which 

"have  ■wrought 
Two  spirits  to  one  equal  mind, 
"With  blessings  beyond  hope  or  thought, 
"With  blessings  ■which  no  words  can  find." 

The  romance  of  life  gone  !  when  with  the  humblest 
and  most  sordid  cares  of  life  are  intimately  associated 
the  calm  delights,  the  settled  bliss  of  home;  when 
upon  duties,  in  themselves  perhaps  often  wearisome 
and  uninteresting,  hang  the  prosperity  and  the 
happiness  of  wife  and  children ;  when  there  is  no 
mean  hope,  because  there  is  no  hope  in  which  regard 
for  others  does  not  largely  mingle — no  base  fear, 
because  suffering  and  distress  cannot  affect  self  alone ; 
when  the  selfishness  which  turns  honest  industry  to 
greed  and  noble  ambition  to  egotistical  lust  of  power 
is  exorcised;  when  life  becomes  a  perpetual  exercise 
of  duties  which  are  delights,  and  delights  which  are 
duties.  Once  romance  meant  chivalry ;  and  the  hero 
of  romance  was  the  man  who  did  his  knightly  devoirs, 
and  was  true  and  loyal  to  God  and  his  lady-love. 


TEE  ANGEL  IN  THE  SOUSE.  231 

If  with  US  it  has  come  to  mean  the  sensual  fancies 
of  nerveless  boys,  and  the  sickly  reveries  of  girls 
for  whose  higher  faculties  society  can  find  no  em- 
ployment, it  is  only  another  instance  in  which  the 
present  is  not  so  much  wiser  and  grander  than  the 
past,  as  its  flatterers  are  fond  of  imagining.  To  us 
it  appears  that  where  the  capacity  for  generous  de- 
votion, for  manly  courage,  for  steadfast  faith  and 
love,  exists,  there  exists  the  main  element  of  romance; 
and  that  where  the  circumstances  of  life  are  most 
favourable  for  the  development  of  these  qualities  in 
action,  they  are  romantic  circumstances,  whether  the 
person  displaying  them  be,  like  Alton  Locke,  a  tailor, 
or,  like  King  Arthur,  a  man  of  stalwart  arm  and 
lordly  presence.  Nor  do  we  see  that  the  giants, 
dragons,  and  other  monsters  of  the  old  romance,  are 
in  themselves  one  whit  more  interesting  than  the 
obstacles  that  beset  the  true  modem  knight  in  his 
struggles  to  perform  manfully  the  duties  of  his  life, 
and  to  carry  out  the  noble  spirit  of  that  vow  which 
he  has  solemnly  taken  at  the  altar,  to  love,  comfort, 
honour,  and  keep  in  sickness  and  in  health,  the 
woman  who  has  put  her  youth,  her  beauty,  her 
life,  and  happiness  into  his  hands. 

It  may,  however,  be  said  that  married  life,  when 
it  is  not  utterly  corrupted  into  crime  and  wretched- 


232  ussAYS. 

ness ;  when,  that  is,  it  in  any  degree  answers  to  its 
ideal — is  necessarily  monotonous ;  and  that,  though 
to  the  husband  and  wife  it  may  be  a  perpetual  source 
of  discipline  and  delight,  it  offers  no  scope  to  the 
poet,  whose  story  must  march,  his  characters  develope, 
and  their  passions  and  affections  exhibit  change, 
gradation,  and  culmination.  We  have  abeady  ad- 
mitted so  much  of  this  objection,  as  to  concede  to 
the  period  before  marriage  greater  facilities  for  marked 
gradations  of  interest  depending  on  changes  in  the 
outward  relations  of  the  persons  whose  fortunes  and 
feelings  are  being  narrated.  We  have  said  that 
those  outward  relations  once  fixed  by  marriage,  the 
action  of  the  poem  which  is  to  depict  married  love 
must  lie  within  narrow  limits,  and  that  its  interest 
must  depend  on  more  subtile  delineation  of  shades  of 
character  and  feeling,  on  a  perception,  in  a  word, 
of  those  effects  which  spring  from  the  conduct  of 
the  affections  in  married  life,  and  those  influences 
which  circumstance  and  character  combine  to  work 
in  the  affections,  and  which,  slight  and  commonplace 
as  some  persons  may  choose  to  think  them,  are 
important  enough  to  make  human  beings  happy  or 
miserable,  and  varied  enough  to  account  for  all  the 
differences  that  an  observant  eye  can  find  in  modem 
family  life.     And  the  fact,  which  few  persons  will 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  233 

dispute,  that  in  our  actual  family  life  there  is  found, 
quite  irrespective  of  distinctions  of  class  and  differ- 
ences of  wealth,  every  possible  gradation  of  happiness 
and  misery,  of  vulgarity  and  refinement,  of  folly  and 
wisdom,  of  genial  sense  and  fantastic  absurdity,  is 
a  sufficient  answer  to  those  who  talk  of  the  monotony 
of  married  life  as  an  objection  to  its  fitness  for  yield- 
ing materials  for  poetry.  In  real  truth,  there  is  much 
more  monotony  in  courtship  than  in  marriage.  A  sort 
of  spasmodic  and,  to  spectators  well  acquainted  with 
the  parties,  a  somewhat  comical  amiability  is  the 
general  mask  under  which  the  genuine  features  of 
the  character  are  hidden.  Moreover,  the  ordinary 
interests  of  life  become  throughout  that  period  com- 
paratively insipid  ;  and  lovers  are  proverbially  stupid 
and  tiresome  to  every  one  but  themselves.  No  doubt 
this  has  its  compensating  advantage  for  the  poet, 
who  transforms  his  readers  into  the  lovers  for  the 
time  being;  but  it  certainly  gives  monotony  to  all 
manifestations  of  the  passion  in  this  its  spring-time, 
which  is  not  found  in  the  same  passion  when  the 
character  has  recovered  from  the  first  shock,  and  life, 
with  all  its  interests,  again  enters  into  the  heart, 
but  invested  with  new  charms  and  higher  respon- 
sibilities, and  with  the  deeper,  fuller  affections  swell- 
ing in  a  steady  current  through  the  pulses. 


234  msATS. 

So  mucli  for  those  more  obvious  objections  that 
may  in  great  measure  account  for  the  almost  uni- 
versal rejection  of  married  love  as  a  theme  for  poetry. 
We  do  not  care  to  argue  against  any  one  who  says, 
much  less  any  one  who  thinks,  that  it  is  only  young 
men  and  women  who  are  interesting.  Even  with 
respect  to  mere  sensuous  beauty,  it  is  a  great  ab- 
surdity to  suppose  that  its  splendour  and  charm  are 
confined  to  two  or  three  years  of  early  womanhood. 
'Beaucoup  de  femmes  de  trente  ans,'  says  a  shrewd 
French  writer,  after  enumerating  the  supposed  at- 
tractions of  youth  in  women,  '  ont  conserve  ces 
avantages;  beaucoup  de  femmes  de  dix-huit  ans  ne 
les  ont  plus  ou  ne  les  ont  jamais  eu.'  Certainly 
no  Englishmen  who  uses  his  eyes  needs  this 
assurance;  and  no  one  who  delights  in  the  society 
of  women  can  doubt  that  they  continue  to  grow  in 
all  that  charms  the  heart  and  intellect,  in  all  the 
materials  of  poetry,  after  they  become  wives  and 
mothers. 

There  is,  however,  one  solid  objection  to  the 
tenour  of  our  remarks  to  which  we  are  inclined 
to  give  great  weight.  We  can  fancy  many  persons, 
for  whose  opinions  we  have  the  highest  respect, 
protesting  against  the  intrusion  of  the  poet  into  the 
recesses  of  married  life,  against  the  analysis  of  feel- 


THE  ANGEL  IN  TEE  HOUSE.  235 

ings  that  were  not  given  us  to  amuse  ourselves  with, 
against 

"  Those  -who,  setting  wide  the  doors  that  bar 
The  secret  bridal  chambers  of  the  heart, 
Let  in  the  day." 

Literature  was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for 
literature.  There  are,  unquestionably,  scenes  which 
the  imagination  had  better  leave  alone,  thoughts 
which  should  find  no  utterance  in  printed  speech, 
feelings,  upon  which  the  light  and  air  cannot  dwell 
without  tainting  them.  But  without  in  the  slightest 
degree  trenching  upon  ground  that  should  be  sacred 
to  silence,  we  conceive  married  life,  as  one  of  the 
most  powerful  influences  at  work  upon  the  character 
and  happiness  of  individuals  and  of  nations,  to  present 
capabilities  of  noble  and  beautiful  poetry,  that,  so 
far  from  weakening  the  strength  or  vulgarizing  the 
delicacy  of  domestic  affection,  would  exalt  and  refine 
it.  We  see  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  conjugal 
relation  would  suffer  in  purity  or  spontaneous  power 
by  being  passed  through  the  alembic  of  a  great  poet's 
imagination.  If  it  became  the  subject  of  morbid 
poetry  or  of  weak  maudlin  poetry — supposing  such 
a  combination  of  terms  allowable — the  same  result 
would  follow  as  from  the  morbid  or  weak  treatment 
of   any   other  powerful  human    emotion — the    poet 


236  ussAYS. 

would  influence  only  weak  and  morbid  people.  Nor 
do  we  see  that  the  danger  is  really  so  great  of  getting 
morbid,  trashy,  unhealthy  poetry  on  this  subject  as 
on  the  more  familiar  subject  of  love  before  marriage. 
It  would  demand  qualities  of  genius  which  in  them- 
selves are  a  strong  guarantee — the  power  and  the 
taste  of  delineating  subtle  shades  of  character  and 
feeling,  a  perception  of  the  action  of  character  upon 
fortune,  an  insight  into  the  working  of  practical  life 
upon  the  affections,  and  their  reaction  upon  it.  Such 
topics  are  not  to  the  taste,  or  within  the  capacity,  of 
melodramatic  or  sensualized  minds;  and  whatever 
good  poetry  was  produced  on  the  subject  would,  as 
all  good  poetry  does,  abide  and  work  upon  the  highest 
class  of  minds,  and  go  on  ever  spreading  its  whole- 
some influence,  and  giving  the  tares  less  and  less 
room  to  grow.  Our  domestic  life  is  not  so  uniformly 
beautiful  as  that  it  may  not  be  profited  by  having  its 
faults,  its  short-comings,  its  miseries  brought  into 
the  full  light  of  consciousness,  as  only  poets  can 
bring  them;  and  bright  pictures  of  what  that  life 
might  be,  what  it  sometimes  is  in  actual  experience, 
may  surely  do  good  as  well  as  give  pleasure.  But 
we  are  not  so  much  concerned  to  vindicate  a  large 
field  of  strictly  ethical  teaching  for  poetry  as  to  open 
to  her  almost  untried  and  certainly  unhacknied  regions 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSR  237 

of  beautj,  pathos,  and  varied  human  interest ;  to  bid 
her  cease  to  stop  at  the  threshold,  and  boldly,  fear- 
lessly, and  reverently  penetrate  into  the  inner  shrine 
of  love — cease  to  sing  for  ever  of  the  spring-green 
and  the  promise,  and  remember  that  love  has  its 
flush  of  summer,  and  its  glow  of  autumn,  and  its 
winter's  lonely  desolation.  Happily,  we  have  not 
to  advocate  a  theory  without  being  able  to  produce 
recent  cases  of  successful  practice.  Mr.  Kingsley's 
Saint''s  Tragedy^  those  poems  by  Mr.  Tennyson  of 
which  we  have  abeady  spoken,  and  some  of  the  most 
beautiful  of  Mr.  Browning's  lyrical  poems,  as  well  as 
his  narrative  poem  of  The  Flight  of  the  Duchess,  and 
such  a  character-piece  as  his  Andrea  del  Sarto,  will 
indicate  sufficiently  how  rich  a  field  lies  waiting  for 
observation  and  delineation  in  poetry  of  the  highest 
order.  Some  of  the  pieces  introduced  upon  our  stage, 
within  the  last  few  years,  principally  of  French  origin 
— such  as,  for  instance.  Still  Waters  Bun  Deep — 
in  spite  of  the  coarse  tendency  to  make  adultery 
too  constant  a  feature  of  the  action,  point  to  the 
capabilities  of  the  subject  for  lighter  treatment. 

One  word  before  we  close  upon  two  special  ad- 
vantages to  be  anticipated  from  the  habitual  exten- 
sion of  poetical  representation  to  mamed  love.  The 
subject,  in  the  first  place,  interests  mature  men  and 


238  JBSSATS. 

women,  who  must  feel,  at  the  perpetual  iteration  of 
the  first  stage  of  passion  in  literature,  much  as  if  their 
bodily  diet  were  confined  to  syllabub  and  sweetmeats. 
Poetry  is  comparatively  little  read  by  grown  people 
who  do  not  pretend  to  cultivate  literature  as  a  special 
study — ^mainly,  we  apprehend,  because  it  confines 
itself  to  repeating,  with  a  variety  of  circumstance, 
experiences  which  they  have  passed  through,  and  of 
the  partial  and  onesided  truth  of  which  they  have  long 
ago  been  convinced  by  their  more  mature  experience. 
A  poetry  which  interpreted  to  them  their  own  lives, 
which  made  them  see  in  those  lives  elements  of  beauty 
and  greatness,  of  pathos  and  peril,  would  win  their 
attention,  stimulate  their  interest,  and  refine  their 
feelings,  just  as  much  as  the  same  efifects  are  pro- 
duced by  ordinary  love-poetry  on  the  young.  We 
shall  not  argue  the  question  whether  the  latter  effect 
has  been  upon  the  whole  for  good  or  not;  such  an 
assumption  lies  at  the  root  of  all  discussions  upon 
particular  extensions  of  the  poetic  range.  To  us  it 
appears  indisputable  that,  along  with  some  perils,  the 
representation  of  any  phase  of  human  life  by  a  man 
of  genuine  poetic  power  is  a  step  towards  improving 
that  phase  practically,  as  well  as  an  enlargement  of 
the  range  of  that  life  which  forms  so  important  a 
part  of  a  modern  man's  cultivation,  the  life  he  par- 
takes by  imaginative  sympathy. 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  239 

A  second  advantage  which  we  should  anticipate 
from  the  proposed  extension  would  he  the  creation 
of  a  literature  which  would,  in  some  important 
respects,  rival  and  outweigh  any  real  attraction  which 
the  properly  styled  'literature  of  prostitution'  may 
have  for  any  but  mauvais  sujets.  It  may  shock 
some  good  and  innocent  people  to  be  told  that  such 
literature  is  attractive  to  any  but  abandoned  men 
and  women.  A  statistical  account  of  the  perusal 
of  the  worst  class  of  French  novels  by  the  educated 
classes  of  this  Christian  and  highly  moral  country 
would  probably  be  a  startling  revelation.  One  can 
only  say  off-hand,  that  a  familiar  acquaintance  with 
this  class  of  works  is  commonly  displayed  in  society ; 
and  the  reasons  are  not  very  recondite.  These  novels 
depict  a  certain  kind  of  real  life  without  reserve ; 
there  is  flesh  and  blood  in  them;  and  though  some 
of  the  attraction  is  due  to  the  mere  fact  that  they 
trench  on  forbidden  ground,  some  to  the  fact  that 
they  stimulate  tendencies  strong  enough  in  most  men, 
and  some  to  their  revelations  of  scenes  invested  with 
the  charm  of  a  licence  happily  not  familiar  to  the 
actual  experiences  of  the  majority  of  their  readers, 
there  can  be  little  question  that  one  strong  attrac- 
tion they  possess  is  due  to  their  being  neither 
simply  sentimental  nor   simply  ascetic.     In   accord- 


240  ASSAYS. 

ance  with  an  established  maxim,  which  tells  us 
that,  corruptto  optimi  pessima  est,  these  hooks  are 
almost  inconceivably  worthless,  even  from  an  artistic 
point  of  view,  but  the  passions  of  these  novels 
are  those  of  grown  people,  and  not  of  babies  or 
cherubim.  We  can  conceive  a  pure  poetry  which 
should  deal  with  the  men  and  women  of  society  in  as 
fearless  and  unabashed  a  spirit,  and  which  should 
beat  this  demon  of  the  stews  at  his  own  magic, — 
should  snatch  the  wand  from  the  hand  of  Comus,  and 
reverse  all  his  mightiest  spells ;  though,  doubtless, 
this  task  belongs  more  to  prose  fiction,  as  the  objec- 
tionable works  are  themselves  prose  fictions.  In  the 
poems  we  have  already  mentioned,  this  has  been 
done.  There  is  no  reason  why  literature,  or  poetry 
in  particular,  should  be  dedicated  virginibus  puer- 
isque ;  men  and  women  want  men's  and  women's 
poetry;  the  afiections  and  the  passions  make  up  the 
poetical  element  of  life,  and  no  poetry  will  commend 
itself  to  men  and  women  so  strongly  as  that  which 
deals  with  their  own  passions  and  affections.  Again 
we  say,  we  are  not  careful  to  guard  our  language 
against  wilful  misconstruction. 

The  volume  published  last  year,  with  the  title  of 
The  Angel  in  the  House,  Part  I.,  inspired  us  with  the 
hope  that  a  poet  of  no  ordinary  promise  was  about  to 


THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  241 

lay  down  the  leading  lines  of  this  great  subject,  in 
a  composition  half  narrative  and  half  reflective,  which 
should  at  least  show,  as  in  a  chart,  what  its  rich 
capabilities  were,  and  give  some  indication  of  the 
treasures  that  future  workers  in  the  same  mine  might 
have  gathered  in,  one  by  one.  But  two  Parts  have 
been  already  published,  and  he  has  only  got  as 
far  as  the  threshold  of  his  subject;  while  the  age 
is  no  longer  able  to  bear  poems  of  epic  length,  even 
with,  and  much  less  without,  epic  action.  He  has 
encumbered  himself  besides  with  the  most  awkward 
plan  that  the  brain  of  poet  ever  conceived.  The 
narrative  is  earned  on  by  short  cantos — idyls  he 
calls  them — in  which,  however,  the  reflective  element 
largely  prevails ;  and  between  each  of  these  are  in- 
troduced, first,  a  poem  wholly  reflective,  and  as  long 
as  the  corresponding  narrative  canto,  upon  some  phase 
of  passion  not  very  strictly  connected  with  the  narra- 
tive, and  then  a  set  of  independent  aphorisms,  which 
are  often  striking  in  sentiment  and  sense,  and  fre- 
quently expressed  with  admirable  terseness  and  force, 
but  which  convey  the  impression  that  the  writer 
is  resolved  not  to  lose  any  of  his  fine  things,  whether 
he  can  find  an  appropriate  place  for  them  or  not. 
We  doubt  whether  any  excellence  of  execution  would 
have  won  great  success  for  a  poem  written  on  such 

B 


242  JSSSAYS. 

a  plan,  and  threatening  to  extend  to  such  a  for- 
midable length.  But  had  the  writer  really  set  about 
singing  his  professed  theme,  and  not  wasted  his 
strength  and  the  patience  of  his  readers  in  this  two- 
fold introduction,  he  possesses  many  of  the  qualities 
requisite  for  success.  His  conception  of  feminine 
character  is  that  of  a  high-minded,  pure-hearted,  and 
impassioned  man,  who  worships  and  respects  as  well 
as  loves  a  woman.  His  delineation  of  the  growth 
of  love  in  the  woman's  heart  is  delicate  and  subtile, 
and  the  lofty  aspirations  and  unselfish  enthusiasm 
he  associates  with  the  passion  of  his  hero  no  less 
true  to  the  type  he  has  chosen.  And  as  we  conceive 
him  not  so  much  to  intend  to  relate  the  story  of 
any  individual  man  and  woman,  as  to  embody  in 
a  narrative  form  a  typical  representation  of  what  love 
between  man  and  woman  should  be,  he  cannot  be 
censured  for  selecting  two  persons  of  a  nature  higher- 
toned  and  circumstances  richer  in  happy  influences 
than  fall  to  the  lot  of  most  of  us  in  this  world.  Had 
it  been  the  purpose  of  our  paper  to  review  The  Angel 
in  the  House,  we  could  have  found  many  admirable 
passages  in  which  sentiments  of  sterling  worth  and 
beauty  are  expressed  with  great  force  and  felicity 
of  language.  Perhaps  the  only  very  prominent  fault 
of  execution  lies  in  the  writer's  tendency  to  run  into 


TEE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE.  243 

logical  puzzles   by  way  of  expounding   the   para- 
doxical character  of  love,  which,  like  wisdom,  is  yet 
justified  of  her  children.     This  tendency  betrays  him 
not  only  into  prosaic  and   even   scholastic   phraseo- 
logy,  that   gives  frequently  a  ludicrous   turn  to  his 
sentiments,  but  tempts  him  too  often  into  the  smart- 
ness of  epigram,  varied  by  the  obscurity  of  trans- 
cendental   metaphysics:       To   the    same   feature   of 
his  mind,  as   shown  in  the  fondness   for  this   way 
of  expressing  his  subject,  we  are  inclined  to  attribute 
the  jerkiness  of  the  verse,  which   often   reads   like 
a  bit  of  Hudihras  slightly  altered,  and  is  very  disso- 
nant  from   the  innermost   spirit   of  the   poem.      If 
we  might  venture  to  offer  a  bit  of  advice  by  way 
of  conclusion,  we  should  say  to   him,   forget  what 
you  have  done ;  treat  these  two  parts  as  an  experiment 
that  has  partially  failed ;  begin  at  the  real  subject — 
married  love — on  a  different  plan  and  in  a  different 
key.     Let  the  narrative,  the  drama,  occupy  a  more 
prominent  position ;  reject  every  phrase,  every  turn 
of  thought,  that  appears  to  you  to   be   particularly 
smart  and  clever,  and  adopt  a  measui-e  that  cannot 
run  into  jingle,  but  will  flow  with  a  calm  delicious 
melody  through  the  pleasant  lands  along  which  its 
course  will  lie.      And  if  we  add   one   exhortation 
more,  it  will  be  to   guard  against  over-refinement; 
S2 


244  ESSAYS. 

not  to  be  afraid  of  the  warm  blood  and  beating 
pulse  of  humanity;  to  remember  that  the  angel  in 
the  house  is,  as  the  least  sensuous  of  poets  reminds 
us — 

'An  angel,  but  a  woman  too.' 

Fraser's  Magazine, 
October,  1856. 


CARLTLE'8  LIFE  OF  STERLING.  24:b 


CAKLYLE'S    LIFE    OF    STERLING. 


The  domain  of  political  economy  is  not  unlimited ; 
the  laws  of  supply  and  demand  are  not  the  only  or 
the  strongest  forces  at  work  in  nature.  Here  is  a 
man  whom  the  world  would  have  been  well  content 
to  leave  quiet  in  his  early  grave  by  the  sea-shore  in 
the  sweetest  of  English  islands;  to  leave  him  there 
to  the  soft  melodies  of  the  warm  wind  and  the  gentle 
rain,  and  the  pious  visits  now  and  then  of  tliose  who 
knew  and  loved  him  when  his  eye  was  bright  and 
his  voice  eloquent  with  sparkling  thoughts  and  wai-m 
aiFections.  He  had  done  nothing  that  the  public 
cared  for;  had  left  no  traces  on  the  sands  of  Time 
that  the  next  tide  would  not  have  effaced.  But  he 
lived  amongst  men  who  write  books,  amongst  some 
of  the  very  best  of  such ;  and  two  of  the  foremost  of 
them  loved  him  so  well  that  they  could  not  let  his 
memory  die, — thought  that  the  positive  actual  results 


246  :essays. 

of  his  life  made  known  to  the  public  were  hut  faint 
indications  of  the  power  that  lay  in  him  though  sorely- 
foiled  and  baffled,  and  that  he  in  his  individual 
spiritual  progress  typified  better  than  most  the 
struggle  that  the  age  is  passing  through,  its  processes 
and  its  results.  But  the  two  men,  though  united  in 
affection  for  Sterling,  were  so  different  in  other  re- 
spects, that  the  memorial  raised  by  the  one  could 
scarcely  fail  to  be  unsatisfactory  to  the  other.  Arch- 
deacon Hare,  the  author  of  the  earlier  biogi-aphy,  is 
a  man  of  encyclopsedic  knowledge, — a  profound  clas- 
sical scholar,  the  most  learned  and  philosophical  of 
modem  English  theologians,  at  once  accurate  and 
wide  in  his  acquaintance  with  European  history  and 
literature.  And  tliis  large  survey  of  the  forms  under 
which  the  men  of  the  past  have  thought  and  acted 
has  not  led  in  him  to  an  indifference  to  all  forms, 
but  rather  to  a  keener  sense  of  the  organic  vitality 
of  forms,  especially  of  national  institutions,  whether 
civil  or  ecclesiastical  polities,  states  or  churches. 
Moreover,  apart  from  this  general  characteristic,  which 
would  lead  to  an  intellectual  and  practical  reverence 
for  the  institutions  of  his  own  land,  and  a  hesitating 
caution  in  the  introduction  of  constitutional  changes, 
Mr.  Hare  is  an  English  churchman  of  no  ordinary 
cast.     He  has  passed  from  the  region  of  traditional 


CASZYZE'S  ZIFE  OF  STERZING.  247 

belief,  has  skirted  tlie  bogs  and  quicksands  of  doubt 
and  disbelief,  and  lias  found  firm  footing  where  alone 
it  seems  possible,  in  a  revelation  whose  letter  is 
coloured  bj  the  human  media  through  which  it  has 
passed,  and  in  a  faith  whose  highest  mysteries  are 
not  only  harmonious  with  but  necessary  complements 
to  the  truths  of  reason.  The  English  Church  is  to 
him  the  purest  embodiment  of  his  religious  idea,  as 
the  English  constitution  was  to  him,  in  common  with 
Niebuhr,  Coleridge  and  other  great  thinkers,  of  the 
idea  of  a  state.  Such  a  man  could  not  write  a  life 
like  Sterling's  without  feeling  that  his  relation  to 
Christianity  and  the  Church  was  the  great  fact  for 
him  as  for  all  of  us;  and  that  the  change  in  him, 
from  hearty  acceptance  of  Christian  doctrine  and 
church  organization  to  a  rejection  of  the  former  and 
something  very  like  contempt  for  the  latter,  needed 
explanation.  That  explanation  he  has  sought  in  the 
overthrow  of  the  balance  of  Sterling's  life  through 
repeated  attacks  of  illness,  which  shut  him  out  from 
practical  duties,  and  threw  him  entirely  upon  spe- 
culation, thereby  disproportionately  developing  the 
negative  side  of  him,  already  too  strong  from  early 
defects  of  education :  and  few  persons  will,  we  should 
think,  be  found  to  deny  Mr.  Hare's  general  position, 
that  the  pursuit   of  speculative  philosophy   as  the 


248  ESSAYS. 

business  of  life  has  this  tendency ;  Mr.  Carlyle,  we 
should  have  supposed,  least  of  all  men.  But  a  special 
cause  interferes  with  Mr.  Carljle's  recognition  of  the 
principle  as  applicable  to  Sterling.  Christianity  as 
understood  commonly,  perhaps  everywhere  except,  it 
may  be,  at  Weimar  and  Chelsea,  and  church  formulas 
certainly  as  understood  everywhere,  he  is  in  the  habit 
of  classing  under  a  category  which  in  his  hands  has 
become  an  extensive  one — that  of  shams.  He  calls 
them  by  various  forcible  but  ugly  names, — as  "  old 
clothes,"  "  spectral  inanities,"  "  gibbering  phantoms," 
or,  with  plainer  meaning,  "huge  unveracities  and 
unrealities."  That  Sterling  at  any  time  of  his  life 
accepted  these  for  ^'eternal  verities"  he  cannot  con- 
sider a  step  from  the  "no"  to  the  "yes,"  nor  their 
repudiation  as  a  step  backwards  from  the  "yes"  to 
the  "no."  Let  him  speak  for  himself.  He  is  com- 
menting on  Sterling's  entry  into  orders  as  Mr  Hare's 
curate  at  Hurstmonceaux. 

"  Concerning  this  attempt  of  Sterling's  to  find  sanctuary  in  the 
old  Church,  and  desperately  grasp  the  hem  of  her  garment  in  such 
manner,  there  will  at  present  he  many  opinions ;  and  mine  must  he 
recorded  here  in  flat  reproval  of  it,  in  mere  pitying  condemnation 
of  it,  as  a  rash,  false,  unwise  and  unpermitted  step.  Nay,  among  the 
evil  lessons  of  his  Time  to  poor  Sterling  I  cannot  hut  account  this  the 
■worst;  properly  indeed,  as  we  may  say,  the  apotheosis,  the  solemn 
apology  and  consecration,  of  aU  the  evil  lessons  that  were  in  it  to 
him.  Alas,  if  we  did  rememher  the  divine  and  awful  nature  of  God's 
Truth,  and  had  not  so  forgotten  it  as  poor  doomed  creatures  never  did 


CARLYLE'S  LIFE  OF  STERLING.  249 

before, — should  we,  durst  -we  in  our  most  audacious  moments,  think 
of  wedding  it  to  the  world's  Untruth,  which  is  also,  like  aU  untruths, 
the  Devil's  ?  Only  in  the  world's  last  lethargy  can  such  things  be 
done,  and  accounted  safe  and  pious !  Fools  !  '  Do  you  think  the 
Living  God  is  a  buzzard  idol,'  sternly  asks  Milton,  that  you  dare 
address  Him  in  this  manner  ? — Such  darkness,  thick  sluggish  clouds 
of  cowardice  and  oblivious  baseness,  have  accumulated  on  us ;  thick- 
ening as  if  towards  the  eternal  sleep !  It  is  not  now  known,  what 
never  needed  proof  or  statement  before,  that  Religion  is  not  a  doubt ; 
that  it  is  a  certainty, — or  else  a  mockery  and  horror.  That  none  or 
aU  of  the  many  things  we  are  in  doubt  about,  and  need  to  have 
demonstrated  and  rendered  probable,  can  by  any  alchemy  be  made  a 
'Eeligion'  for  us;  but  are  and  must  continue  a  baleful,  quiet  or 
imquiet,  Hj^jocrisy  for  us ;  and  bring — salvation,  do  we  fancy  ?  I 
think,  it  is  another  thing  they  will  bring ;  and  are,  on  all  hands, 
visibly  bringing,  this  good  while  ! " 

Herein  consists  the  whole  difference  between  Hare 
and  Carlyle  in  their  views  of  Sterling's  career.  They 
look  at  it  from  such  opposite  points  that  what  is 
the  zenith  to  one  is  the  nadir  to  the  other.  What 
Sterling  himself  thought  of  it,  was  strikingly  ex- 
pressed to  his  brother,  Captain  Anthony  Sterling,  by 
a  comparison  of  his  case  "to  that  of  a  young  lady 
who  has  tragically  lost  her  lover,  and  is  willing  to  be 
half-hoodwinked  into  a  convent,  or  in  any  noble  or 
quasi-noble  way  to  escape  from  a  world,  which  has 
become  intolerable."  The  truth  seems  to  be,  that 
Sterling  went  into  orders  under  the  combined  in- 
fluence of  remorse  for  the  share  he  had  inadvertently 
had  in  causing  the  disastrous  fate  of  a  near  relative, 
(Mr.  Boyd,  who  was  shot  with  Torrijos  in  Spain,) 


250  ESSAYS. 

and  of  a  gradual  disencliantment  from  trust  in  mere 
political  schemes  for  the  regeneration  of  mankind, — 
a  disease  more  common  to  the  genial  young  men  of 
his  time  than  of  ours.  That  while  in  the  exercise  of 
his  duties  as  a  parish-priest  he  was  energetic,  useful, 
and  happy,  the  evidence  in  Mr.  Hare's  book  is  fully 
sufficient  to  show.  It  is  impossible  to  say  whether 
his  scepticism  would  have  come  upon  him  had  he 
continued  in  that  active  career;  but  it  is  certainly 
a  gratuitous  supposition  of  Mr.  Carlyle  that  the  ill- 
health  which  put  an  end  to  it  was  only  the  outward 
and  ostensible  cause  of  its  termination,  and  does  not 
appear  to  be  borne  out  by  a  single  letter  or  expression 
of  Sterling's  own.  Indeed,  for  years  after  he  left 
Hurstmonceaux,  he  seemed  to  continue  as  firm  in  his 
attachment  to  Christianity  as  when  he  was  there; 
though,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  a  man  of  Sterling's  intellect,  who  would 
surrender  his  beliefs  to  Strauss' s  Leben  Jesu,  is  likely 
in  the  present  day  to  keep  them  under  any  con- 
ceivable circumstances.  We  think  that  Mr.  Hare 
on  the  one  hand  has  attributed  too  exclusive  an  in- 
fluence to  Sterling's  forced  inactivity,  and  Mr.  Carlyle 
has  certainly  not  taken  it  sufficiently  into  account  as 
a  determining  cause  of  his  scepticism. 

But  whatever  subject  Mr.  Carlyle  takes  up,  and 


CAELTLE'S  LIFE  OF  STERLING.  251 

whether  he  be  right  or  wrong  in  his  opinions,  he  is 
sure  to  write  an  interesting  book.  He  is  never 
wearisome,  and  whether  his  tale  have  been  twice  told 
or  not,  he  clothes  it  by  his  original  treatment  with  an 
attractive  charm  that  few  writers  can  lend  even  to  an 
entirely  new  subject.  The  maxim  of  the  author  of 
Modern  Antiquity,  that 

"True  genius  is  the  ray  that  flings 
A  novel  light  o'er  common  things," 

has  seldom  been  better  illustrated  than  by  this  life  of 
Sterling.  The  facts  are  most  of  them  neither  new 
nor  of  a  nature  in  themselves  to  excite  any  very  strong 
interest,  but  the  details  of  the  life  are  told  with  such 
simplicity,  and  yet  with  such  constant  reference  to 
the  grand  educational  process  which  they  collectively 
make  up,  that  one  seems  listening  to  a  narrative  by 
Sterling's  guardian  angel,  loving  enough  to  sympa- 
thize in  the  smallest  minutise,  and  wise  enough  to  see 
in  each  of  them  the  greatness  of  the  crowning  result. 
Nor  is  this  impression  in  the  least  impaired  by  the 
insignificance  of  the  sum  total  of  Sterling's  actual 
achievements.  For  had  they  been  tenfold  greater 
than  they  were,  they  would  have  been  as  nothing  in 
the  presence  of  that  which  Mr.  Carlyle  looks  to  as  the 
soul's  great  achievement — heroic  nobleness  of  struggle 
and  a  calm  abiding  of  the  issue.     After  noticing  the 


252  ussATS. 

puritj  of  Sterling's  cliaracter,  and  his  confonnity  to 
"  the  so-called  moralities,"  his  biographer  goes  on  to 
say— 

"  In  clear  and  perfect  fidelity  to  Truth  wherever  found,  in  child- 
like and  soldierlike,  pious  and  valiant  loyalty  to  the  Highest,  and 
what  of  good  and  evil  that  might  send  him, — he  excelled  among  good 
men.  The  joys  and  the  sorrows  of  his  lot  he  took  with  true  sim- 
plicity and  acquiescence.  Like  a  true  son,  not  like  a  miserable 
mutinous  rehel,  he  comported  himself  in  this  Universe.  Extremity 
of  distress, — and  surely  his  fervid  temper  had  enough  of  contra- 
diction in  this  world, — could  not  tempt  him  into  impatience  at  any 
time.  By  no  chance  did  you  ever  hear  from  him  a  whisper  of  those 
mean  repinings,  miserable  arraignings  and  questionings  of  the  Eternal 
Power,  such  as  weak  souls  even  weU  disposed  will  sometimes  give 
way  to  in  the  pressure  of  their  despair ;  to  the  like  of  this  he  never 
yielded,  or  showed  the  least  tendency  to  yield ; — which  surely  was 
well  on  his  part.  For  the  Eternal  Power,  I  still  remark,  wiU  not 
answer  the  like  of  this,  but  silently  and  terribly  accounts  it  impious, 
blasphemous,  and  damnable,  and  now  as  heretofore  will  visit  it  as 
such.  Not  a  rebel  but  a  son,  I  said ;  willing  to  sufifer  when  Heaven 
said.  Thou  shalt ; — and  withal,  what  is  perhaps  rarer  in  such  a  com- 
bination, willing  to  rejoice  also,  and  right  cheerily  taking  the  good 
that  was  sent,  whensoever  or  in  whatever  form  it  came. 

"A  pious  soul  we  may  justly  call  him;  devoutly  submissive  to 
the  will  of  the  Supreme  in  aU  things  :  the  highest  and  sole  essential 
form  which  Religion  can  assume  in  man,  and  without  which  all  forms 
of  religion  are  a  mockery  and  a  delusion  in  man." 

Every  one  not  personally  acquainted  with  Sterling 
will  feel,  that  the  great  interest  of  the  book  is  in  the 
light  thrown  by  it  on  Mr.  Carlyle's  own  belief.  For 
good  or  evil,  Mr.  Carlyle  is  a  power  in  the  country ; 
and  those  who  watch  eagerly  the  signs  of  the  times 
have  their  eyes  fixed  upon  him.      What  he  would 


CARLTLE'S  LIFE  OF  STERLIXO.  253 

have  us  leave  is  plain  enough,  and  that  too  with  all 
haste,  as  a  sinking  ship  that  will  else  carry  us — state, 
church,  and  sacred  property — down  along  with  it. 
But  whither  would  he  have  us  fly?  Is  there  firm 
land,  be  it  ever  so  distant?  or  is  the  wild  waste  of 
waters,  seething,  warring  round  as  far  as  eye  can 
reach,  our  only  hope  ? — the  pilot-stars,  shining  fitfiilly 
through  the  parting  of  the  storm-clouds,  our  only 
guidance?  There  are  hearts  in  this  land  almost 
broken,  whose  old  traditional  beliefs,  serving  them  at 
least  as  moral  supports,  Mr.  Carlyle  and  teachers  like 
him  have  undermined.  Some  betake  themselves  to 
literature,  as  Sterling  did  j  some  fill  up  the  void  with 
the  excitement  of  politics ;  others  feebly  bemoan  their 
irreparable  loss,  and  wear  an  outward  seeming  of 
miiversal  irony  and  sarcasm.  Mr.  Carlyle  has  no 
right,  no  man  has  any  right,  to  weaken  or  destroy 
a  faith  which  he  cannot  or  will  not  replace  with  a 
loftier.  We  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,  that  the 
language  which  IMr.  Carlyle  is  in  the  habit  of  em- 
ploying towards  the  religion  of  England  and  of 
Europe  is  unjustifiable.  He  ought  to  have  said 
nothing,  or  he  ought  to  have  said  more.  Scraps 
of  verse  from  Goethe,  and  declamations,  however 
brilliantly  they  may  be  phrased,  are  but  a  poor  com- 
pensation for  the  slightest  obscuring  of  *'  the  hope  of 


254  ESSAYS. 

immortality  brought  to  light  by  the  gospel,"  and  by 
it  conveyed  to  the  hut  of  the  poorest  man,  to  awaken 
his  crushed  intelligence  and  lighten  the  load  of  his 
misery.  Mr.  Carlyle  slights,  after  his  contemptuous 
fashion,  the  poetry  of  his  contemporaries :  one  of  them 
has  uttered  in  song  some  practical  wisdom  which  he 
would  do  well  to  heed — 

"  0  thou  that  after  toil  and  storm 

May'st  seem  to  have  reached  a  purer  air, 
"Whose  faith  has  centre  everywhere, 
Nor  cares  to  fix  itself  to  form, 

"  Leave  thou  thy  sister,  when  she  prays, 
Her  early  heaven,  her  happy  views; 
Nor  thou  with  shadowed  hint  confuse 
A  life  that  leads  melodious  days. 

"Her  faith  through  form  is  pure  as  thine, 
Her  hands  are  quicker  unto  good. 
Oh,  sacred  he  the  flesh  and  hlood 
To  which  she  links  a  truth  divine! 

"  See  thou,  that  countest  reason  ripe 
In  holding  by  the  law  within. 
Thou  fail  not  in  a  world  of  sin. 
And  even  for  want  of  such  a  type." 

This  life  of  Sterling  will  be  useful  to  the  class 
whose  beliefs  have  given  way  before  Mr.  Carlyle's 
destroying  energies;  because  it  furnishes  hints,  not 
to  be  mistaken  though  not  obtrusive,  as  to  the  extent 
to  which  they  must  be  prepared  to  go  if  they  would 
really  be  his  disciples.     If  the  path  has  in  its  very 


CARLYIE'S  LIFE  OF  STERimG.  255 

dangers  an  attraction  for  some,  while  others  are 
shudderingly  repelled,  in  either  case  the  result  is 
desirable,  as  it  is  the  absence  of  certainty  which 
causes  the  pain  and  paralyzes  the  power  of  action. 
At  any  rate,  the  doctrines  of  this  teacher  must  be  so 
much  more  intelligible  to  the  mass  when  applied,  as 
they  are  here,  in  commentary  upon  a  life  all  whose 
details  are  familiar,  because  it  is  the  life  of  a  contem- 
porary and  a  countiyman,  that  all  who  read  must 
inevitably  be  impressed  with  that  great  lesson  of  the 
philosophic  poet — 

"The  intellectual  power  througli  words  and  things 
Goes  sounding  on,  a  dim  and  perilous  way." 

Though  John  Sterling  is  of  course  the  principal 
figure  in  the  composition,  and  Mr.  Carlyle's  treatment 
the  great  attraction  of  the  book,  yet  the  figures  in  the 
background  will  be  those  to  make  most  impression 
on  the  general  reader.  Coleridge  stands  there  in 
striking  but  caricatured  likeness ;  and  even  his  most 
devoted  admirers  will  not  be  sorry  to  see  a  portrait 
of  their  master  by  such  a  hand :  and  all  will  curiously 
observe  the  contrast  between  the  sarcastic  bitterness 
which  colours  the  drawing  of  the  philosophic  Chris- 
tian, and  the  kindly  allowance  through  which  the 
character  of  John  Sterling's  father,  the  famous 
"  Thunderer"  of  the  Times,  is  delineated.     We  half 


259  ^SSJYS. 

suspect  that  Coleridge  would  have  appeared  to  Mr. 
Carljle  a  much  greater  man,  if  he  had  allowed  him 
to  declaim — "  Harpocrates-Stentor,"  as  Sterling  calls 
him — with  trumpet  voice  and  for  time  unlimited  on 
the  divine  virtues  of  Silence.  There  are  besides,  as 
in  all  Mr.  Carlyle's  works,  passages  of  wise  thought 
expressed  in  most  felicitous  language :  of  which  not 
the  least  important  is  this  advice  given  to  Sterling  in 
reference  to  his  poetic  aspirations. 

"  You  can  speak  -witli  supreme  excellence ;  sing  witli  considerable 
excellence  you  never  can.  And  the  Age  itself,  does  it  not,  beyond 
most  ages,  demand  and  require  clear  speech ;  an  Age  incapable  of 
being  sung  to,  in  any  but  a  trivial  manner,  till  these  convulsive 
agonies  and  wild  revolutionary  overtumings  readjust  themselves? 
Intelligible  word  of  command,  not  musical  psalmody  and  fiddling,  is 
.  possible  in  this  fell  storm  of  battle.  Beyond  all  ages,  our  Age  ad- 
monishes whatsoever  thinking  or  writing  man  it  has :  Oh  speak  to  me, 
some  wise  iutelligible  speech;  your  wise  meaning,  ia  the  shortest 
and  clearest  way;  behold,  I  am  djring  for  want  of  wise  meaning, 
and  insight  into  the  devouring  fact :  speak,  if  you  have  any  wisdom ! 
As  to  song  so-called,  and  your  fiddling  talent, — even  if  you  have  one, 
much  more  if  you  have  none, — we  will  talk  of  that  a  couple  of 
centuries  hence,  when  things  are  calmer  again.  Homer  shall  be  thrice 
welcome ;  but  only  when  Troy  is  taken :  alas,  while  the  siege  lasts, 
and  battle's  fury  rages  evenrwhere,  what  can  I  do  with  the  Homer  ? 
I  want  Achilleus  and  Odysseus,  and  am  enraged  to  see  them  trying 
to  be  Homers  ! — " 

These  bricks  from  Babylon  convey  but  scanty 
intimation  of  the  varied  interest  of  the  book.  How- 
ever the  readers  of  it  may  differ  from  its  opinions, 
they  cannot  but  find,  even  in  Mr.  Carlyle's   mis- 


CARLTLE'S  LIFE  OF  STERLING-  257 

judgments  and  prejudices,  ample  matter  for  serious 
reflection :  for  if  he  misjudges,  it  is  generally  because 
he  is  looking  too  intently  at  a  single  truth,  or  a  single 
side  of  a  truth;  and  such  misjudg-ments  are  more 
suggestive  than  the  completest  propositions  of  a  less 
earnest,  keen-sighted,  and  impassioned  thinker.  He 
is  indeed  more  a  prophet  than  a  logician  or  a  man  of 
science.  And  one  lesson  we  may  all  learn  from  this, 
as  from  everything  he  writes, — and  it  is  a  lesson  that 
interferes  with  no  creed, — that  honesty  of  purpose, 
and  resoluteness  to  do  and  to  say  the  thing  we  believe 
to  be  the  true  thing,  will  give  heart  to  a  man's  life, 
when  all  ordinary  motives  to  action  and  all  ordinary 
supports  of  energy  have  failed  like  a  rotten  reed. 


258  ASSAYS. 


''ESMOND." 


Esmond  is  an  autobiographical  memoir  of  the  first 
five-and-thirty  years  of  the  life  of  an  English  gentle- 
man of  family,  written  in  his  old  age  after  his 
retirement  to  Virginia;  and  edited  with  an  intro- 
duction by  his  daughter,  for  the  instruction  and 
amusement  of  her  children  and  descendants,  and  to 
give  them  a  lively  portrait  of  the  noble  gentleman  her 
father.  It  is  historical,  inasmuch  as  political  events 
enter  both  as  motives  to  the  actors  and  as  facts  in- 
fluencing their  fortunes,  and  because  historical  per- 
sonages are  brought  upon  the  scene:  both  are  necessary 
elements  in  the  career  of  a  gentleman  and  a  soldier, 
but  neither  forms  the  staple  or  the  main  object  of 
the  book, — which  concerns  itself  with  the  characters 
and  fortunes  of  the  noble  family  of  Castlewood,  of 
which  Henry  Esmond  is  a  member.  The  period 
embraced  is  from  the  accession  of  James  the  Second 


''ESMOND."  259 

to  the  death  of  Queen  Anne,  and  the  manners  de- 
picted are  those  of  the  English  aristocracy.  Archae- 
ology is  not  a  special  object  with  the  author ;  though 
both  costume,  in  its  more  limited  sense,  and  manners, 
are,  we  believe,  accurately  preserved.  But  Wardour 
Street  and  the  Royal  Academy  need  fear  no  com- 
petitor in  Mr.  Thackeray.  His  business  lies  mainly 
with  men  and  women,  not  with  high-heeled  shoes 
and  hoops  and  patches,  and  old  china  and  carved 
high-backed  chairs.  Nor  have  Mr.  Macaulay's  forth- 
coming volumes  been  anticipated,  except  in  one  in- 
stance, where  the  Chevalier  St.  George  is  brought 
to  England,  has  an  interview  with  his  sister  at 
Kensington  just  before  her  death,  is  absolutely  present 
in  London  at  the  proclamation  of  George  the  First, 
and  indeed  only  misses  being  James  the  Third,  King 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  by  grace  of  his  own 
exceeding  baseness  and  folly.  Scott,  who  had  a 
reverence  for  the  Stuarts  impossible  to  Mr.  Thackeray 
with  his  habit  of  looking  at  the  actors  in  life  from 
the  side-scenes  and  in  the  green-room  rather  than 
from  before  the  foot-lights,  has  not  scrupled  to  take 
a  similar  liberty  with  his  Chevalier  in  JRedgauntlet, 
merely  to  arrange  a  striking  tableau  at  the  fall  of 
the  curtain.  But  these  violations  of  received  tradition 
with  respect  to  such  well-known  historical  personages, 
S2 


260  ass  ATS. 

force  upon  the  reader  unnecessarily  the  fictitious 
character  of  the  narrative,  and  are  therefore  better 
avoided. 

There  is  abundance  of  incident  in  the  book,  but  not 
much  more  plot  than  in  one  of  Defoe's  novels:  neither 
is  there,  generally  speaking,  a  plot  in  a  man's  life, 
though  there  may  be  and  often  is  in  sections  of  it. 
Unity  is  given  not  by  a  consecutive  and  self-de- 
veloping story,  but  by  the  ordinary  events  of  life 
blended  with  those  peculiar  to  a  stirring  time  acting 
on  a  family  group,  and  bringing  out  and  ripening 
their  qualities ;  these  again  controlling  the  subsequent 
events,  just  as  happens  in  life.  The  book  has  the 
great  charm  of  reality.  The  framework  is,  as  we 
have  said,  historical:  men  with  well-known  names, 
political,  literary,  military,  pass  and  repass ;  their 
sayings  and  doings  are  interwoven  with  the  sayings 
and  doings  of  the  fictitious  characters ;  and  all  reads 
like  a  genuine  memoir  of  the  time.  The  rock  ahead 
of  historical  novelists  is  the  danger  of  reproducing 
too  much  of  their  raw  material;  making  the  art 
visible  by  which  they  construct  their  image  of  a 
bygone  time;  painting  its  manners  and  the  outside 
of  its  life  with  the  sense  of  contrast  with  which  men 
of  the  present  naturally  view  them,  or  looking  at  its 
parties  and  its  politics  in  the  light  of  modem  questions : 


"ESMOND."  261 

the  rock  ahead  of  Mr.  Thackeraj,  in  particular,  was 
the  temptation  merely  to  dramatize  his  lectures :  but 
he  has  triumphed  over  these  difficulties,  and  Queen 
Anne's  Colonel  writes  his  life, — and  a  very  interesting 
life  it  is, — just  as  such  a  Queen  Anne's  Colonel  might 
he  supposed  to  have  written  it.  We  shall  give  no 
epitome  of  the  story,  because  the  merit  of  the  book 
does  not  lie  there,  and  what  story  there  is  readers  like 
to  find  out  for  themselves. 

Mr.  Thackeray's  humour  does  not  mainly  consist 
in  the  creation  of  oddities  of  manner,  habit,  or  feel- 
ing; but  in  so  representing  actual  men  and  women 
as  to  excite  a  sense  of  incongruity  in  the  reader's 
mind — a  feeling  that  the  follies  and  vices  described 
are  deviations  from  an  ideal  of  humanity  always 
present  to  the  writer.  The  real  is  described  vividly, 
with  that  perception  of  individuality  which  con- 
stitutes the  artist;  but  the  description  implies  and 
suggests  a  standard  higher  than  itself,  not  by  any 
direct  assertion  of  such  a  standard,  but  by  an  un- 
mistakeable  irony.  The  moral  antithesis  of  actual 
and  ideal  is  the  root  from  which  springs  the  peculiar 
charm  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  writings;  that  mixture 
of  gaiety  and  seriousness,  of  sarcasm  and  tenderness, 
of  enjoyment  and  cynicism,  which  reflects  so  well  the 
contradictory  consciousness  of  man  as  a  being  with 


262  ASSAYS. 

senses  and  passions  and  limited  knowledge,  yet  with 
a  conscience  and  a  reason  speaking  to  him  of  eternal 
laws  and  a  moral  order  of  the  universe.  It  is  this 
that  makes  Mr.  Thackeray  a  profound  moralist,  just 
as  Hogarth  showed  his  knowledge  of  perspective  by 
drawing  a  landscape  throughout  in  violation  of  its 
rules.  So,  in  Mr.  Thackeray's  picture  of  society 
as  it  is,  society  as  it  ought  to  be  is  implied.  He 
could  not  have  painted  Vanity  Fair  as  he  has,  unless 
Eden  had  been  shining  brightly  in  his  inner  eyes. 
The  historian  of  "  snobs "  indicates  in  every  touch 
his  fine  sense  of  a  gentleman  or  a  lady.  No  one 
could  be  simply  amused  with  Mr.  Thackeray's  de- 
scriptions or  his  dialogues.  A  shame  at  one's  own 
defects,  at  the  defects  of  the  world  in  which  one  was 
living,  was  irresistibly  aroused  along  with  the  re- 
ception of  the  particular  portraiture.  But  while  he 
was  dealing  with  his  own  age,  his  keen  perceptive 
faculty  prevailed,  and  the  actual  predominates  in  his 
pictures  of  modem  society.  His  fine  appreciation 
of  high  character  has  hitherto  been  chiefly  shown 
(though  with  bright  exceptions)  by  his  definition  of 
its  contrary.  But,  getting  quite  out  of  the  region 
of  his  personal  experiences,  he  has  shown  his  true 
nature  without  this  mask  of  satire  and  irony.  The 
ideal  is  no  longer  implied,  but  realized,  in  the  two 


''ESMONB."  263 

leading  characters  of  Esmond.  The  medal  is  re- 
versed, and  what  appeared  as  scorn  of  baseness  is 
revealed  as  love  of  goodness  and  nobleness — what 
appeared  as  cynicism  is  presented  as  a  heart-worship 
of  what  is  pure,  affectionate,  and  unselfish.  He  has 
selected  for  his  hero  a  very  noble  type  of  the  Cavalier 
softening  into  the  man  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
for  his  heroine  one  of  the  sweetest  women  that  ever 
breathed  from  canvas  or  from  book  since  EafFaelle 
painted  Maries  and  Shakspere  created  a  new  and 
higher  consciousness  of  woman  in  the  mind  of 
Germanic  Europe.  Colonel  Esmond  is  indeed  a 
fine  gentleman, — the  accomplished  man,  the  gallant 
soldier,  the  loyal  heart,  and  the  passionate  lover, 
whose  richly  contrasted  but  harmonious  character 
Clarendon  would  have  delighted  to  describe;  while 
Falkland  and  Kichard  Lovelace  would  have  worn 
him  in  their  hearts'  core.  Lucy  Hutchinson's 
husband  might  have  stood  for  his  model  in  all  but 
politics,  and  his  Toryism  has  in  it  more  than  a 
smack  of  English  freedom  very  much  akin  to  that 
noble  patriot's  Republicanism.  Especially  does  he 
recal  Colonel  Hutchinson  in  his  lofty  principle,  his 
unswerving  devotion  to  it,  a  certain  sweet  seriousness 
which  comes  in  happily  to  temper  a  penetrating 
intellect,  and  a  faculty  of  seeing  things  and  persons 


264  :essay8. 

as  they  are,  to  whicli  we  owe  passage  after  passage 
in  the  book,  that  it  requires  no  effort  to  imagine 
Thackeray  uttering  himself  in  those  famous  lectures  of 
his,  and  looking  up  with  his  kind  glance  to  catch  the 
delighted  smile  of  his  audience  at  his  best  points. 
Nor  is  there  anything  unartistic  in  this  reminder  of 
the  author ;  for  this  quality  of  clear  insight  into  men 
and  things  united  with  a  kindly  nature  and  a  large 
capacity  for  loving  is  not  limited  to  any  particular 
time  or  age,  and  combines  with  Colonel  Esmond's 
other  qualities  so  as  to  give  no  impression  of  incon- 
gruity. But  besides  the  harmonizing  effect  of  this 
sweetly  serious  temperament,  the  record  of  Colonel 
Esmond's  life  is  throughout  a  record  of  his  attach- 
ment to  one  woman,  towards  whom  his  childish 
gratitude  for  protection  grows  with  his  growth  into 
a  complex  feeling,  in  which  filial  affection  and  an 
unconscious  passion  are  curiously  blended.  So  un- 
conscious, indeed,  is  the  passion,  that,  though  the 
reader  has  no  difficulty  in  interpreting  it,  Esmond 
himself  is  for  years  the  avowed  and  persevering 
though  hopeless  lover  of  this  very  lady's  daughter. 
The  relation  between  Esmond  and  Rachel  Viscountess 
Castlewood  is  of  that  sort  that  nothing  short  of 
consummate  skill  could  have  saved  it  from  becoming 
ridiculous  or  offensive,  or  both.     In  Mr.  Thackeray's 


''ESMOND."  265 

hands,  tlie  difficulty  has  become  a  triumph,  and  has 
given  rise  to  beauties  which  a  safer  ambition  would 
have  not  dared  to  attempt.  The  triumph  is  attained 
by  the  conception  of  Lady  Castlewood's  character. 
She  is  one  of  those  women  who  never  grow  old, 
because  their  lives  are  in  the  aifections,  and  the 
suffering  that  comes  upon  such  lives  only  brings  out 
strength  and  beauty  unperceived  before.  The  gTaces 
of  the  girl  never  pass  away,  but  maturer  loveliness 
is  added  to  them,  and  spring,  summer,  autumn,  all 
bloom  on  their  faces  and  in  their  hearts  at  once. 
A  faint  foreshadowing  of  this  character  we  have  had 
before  in  Helen  Pendennis :  but  she  had  been  de- 
pressed and  crushed  in  early  life,  had  married  for 
a  home,  certainly  without  passion ;  and  her  nature 
was  chilled  and  despondent.  Lady  Castlewood  has 
the  development  that  a  happy  girlhood,  and  a 
marriage  with  the  man  she  devoutly  loves,  can  give 
to  a  woman;  and  her  high  spirit  has  time  to  grow 
for  her  support  when  it  is  needed.  Even  the  weak- 
nesses of  her  character  are  but  as  dimples  on  a  lovely 
face,  and  make  us  like  her  the  better  for  them, 
because  they  give  individuality  to  what  might  else 
be  felt  as  too  ideal.  Nothing  can  be  more  true  or 
touching  than  the  way  this  lady  demeans  herself 
when  she  finds  her  husband's  affection  waning  from 


266  ussATS. 

her ;  and  Mr.  Thackeray  is  eminently  Mr.  Thackeray 
in  his  delineation  of  that  waning  love  on  the  one  side, 
and  the  strength  and  dignity  which  the  neglected 
wife  gradually  draws  from  her  own  hitherto  untried 
resources,  when  she  ceases  to  lean  on  the  arm  that 
was  withdrawn,  and  discovers  that  the  heart  she 
had  worshipped  was  no  worthy  idol.  But  to  those 
who  would  think  the  mother  "slow"  we  can  have 
no  hesitation  in  recommending  the  daughter.  Miss 
Beatrix  Esmond — familiarly  and  correctly  termed 
"Trix"  by  her  friends — is  one  of  those  dangerous 
young  ladies  who  fascinate  every  one,  man  or  woman, 
that  they  choose  to  fascinate,  but  care  for  nobody  but 
themselves;  and  their  care  for  themselves  simply 
extends  to  the  continual  gratification  of  a  boundless 
love  of  admiration,  and  the  kind  of  power  which 
results-  from  it.  If  Miss  Rebecca  Sharpe  had  really 
been  a  Montmorency,  and  a  matchless  beauty,  and 
a  maid  of  honour  to  a  Queen,  she  might  have  sub- 
limated into  a  Beatrix  Esmond.  It  is  for  this  proud, 
capricious,  and  heartless  beauty,  that  Henry  Esmond 
sighs  out  many  years  of  his  life,  and  does  not  find 
out,  till  she  is  lost  to  him  and  to  herself,  how  much 
he  loves  her  "little  mamma,"  as  the  saucy  young 
lady  is  fond  of  calling  Lady  Castlewood.  Beatrix 
belongs  to  the  class  of  women  who  figure  most  in 


''ESMOND."  267 

history,  with  eyes  as  bright  and  hearts  as  hard  as 
diamonds,  as  Mary  Stuart  said  of  herself;  and  Mary 
Stuart  and  Miss  Esmond  have  many  points  in 
common.  Of  her  end  we  are  almost  disposed  to  say 
with  Othello,  "  Oh !  the  pity  of  it,  lago,  oh !  the  pity 
of  it."  Unlovely  as  she  is  because  unloving,  yet  her 
graces  are  too  fair  to  be  so  dragged  through  the  dirt 
— that  stream  is  too  bright  to  end  in  a  city  sewer. 
But  tlie  tragedy  is  no  less  tragical  for  the  tawdry 
comedy  of  its  close.  Life  has  no  pity  for  the  pitiless, 
no  sentiment  for  those  who  trample  on  love  as  a 
weakness. 

These  three  characters  are  the  most  prominent  in 
the  book.  With  one  or  the  other  of  the  two  women 
Henry  Esmond's  thoughts  are  almost  always  en- 
gaged ;  and  it  is  to  win  the  reluctant  love  of  the 
daughter  that  he  seeks  distinction  as  a  soldier,  a 
politician,  and  finally  a  conspirator  in  behalf  of  the 
son  of  King  James.  In  this  threefold  career,  he  has 
intercourse  with  Addison,  Steele,  and  the  wits ;  serves 
under  Marlborough  at  Blenheim  and  Bamilies ;  is  on 
terms  of  intimacy  with  St.  John  and  the  Tory  leaders. 
A  succession  of  Viscounts  Castlewood  figure  on  the 
scene,  all  unmistakeable  English  noblemen  of  the 
Stuart  period.  A  dowager  Viscountess  is  a  more 
faithful  than  flattering  portrait  of  a  class  of  ladies  of 


268  £SSATS. 

rank  of  that  time.  The  Chevalier  St.  George  appears 
oftener  than  once.  The  great  Duke  of  Hamilton  is 
about  to  make  Beatrix  his  Duchess,  when  he  is 
hasely  murdered  in  that  doubly  fatal  duel  with  the 
execrable  Lord  Mohun,  who  had  twelve  years  before 
slain,  also  in  a  duel,  my  Lord  Viscount  Castlewood, 
the  father  of  Beatrix.  The  book  has  certainly  no 
lack  of  incident ;  the  persons  come  and  go  as  on  the 
scene  of  real  life ;  and  all  are  clearly  conceived,  and 
sketched  or  painted  in  full  with  no  uncertain  aim 
or  faltering  hand.  To  draw  character  has  been  the 
predominant  object  of  the  author ;  and  he  has  so  done 
it  as  to  sustain  a  lively  interest  and  an  agreeable 
alternation  of  emotions,  through  a  form  of  com- 
position particularly  difficult  to  manage  without  be- 
coming soon  tedious,  or  breaking  the  true  conditions 
of  the  form.  Mr.  Thackeray  has  overcome  not  only 
this  self-imposed  difficulty,  but  one  greater  still, 
which  he  could  not  avoid — his  own  reputation. 
Esmond  will,  we  think,  rank  higher  as  a  work  of 
art  than  either  Vanity  Fair,  or  Pendennis ;  because 
the  characters  are  of  a  higher  type,  and  drawn  with 
greater  finish,  and  the  book  is  more  of  a  complete 
whole :  not  that  we  anticipate  for  it  anything  like 
the  popularity  of  the  former  of  these  two  books,  as 
it  is  altogether  of  a  graver  cast,   the  satire  is  not 


''ESMOND."  269 

SO  pungent,  tlie  canvas  is  far  less  crowded,  and 
the  subject  is  distant  and  unfamiliar ;  and,  may 
be,  its  excellences  will  not  help  it  to  a  very  large 
public. 


The  Spectator, 
Nov.  6,  1852. 


270  £SSATS. 


''MY   NOVEL. 

OR,  VARIETIES  OF  ENGLISH  LIFE.' 


Mr.  Caxton  junior  has,  he  informs  us,  written  his 
novel  with  the  twofold  purpose  of  making  up  the 
deficit  in  his  annual  income  caused  by  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn-laws,  and  of  doing  his  part  to  counteract 
the  effect  of  incendiary  publications,  by  exhibiting 
the  rural  aristocracy,  and  generally  the  richer  classes, 
in  a  truer  and  kindlier  light  than  that  which  is 
thrown  upon  them  by  the  dark  lantern  of  Socialist, 
Radical,  or  Free-trade  Diogenes.  The  second  title 
of  the  work  implies  even  a  broader  and  more  philo- 
sophic purpose.  For  while  every  English  novel 
must  represent  varieties  of  English  life,  that  which 
assumes  to  do  this  in  a  special  sense  must  be  in- 
tended to  display  the  ^relations  of  one  part  of  our 
social  fabric  to  another,  and  to  trace  a  wise  design, 
a  unity  of  aim,  a  complex  harmony,  in   the  whole 


''MT  novel:'  271 

made  up  of  these  varieties.  The  first  of  Mr.  Caxton's 
objects  have  doubtless  been  obtained  5  the  other  has 
not  been  accomplished  either  in  its  wider  or  its 
narrower  sense.  Mr.  Caxton  does  not  specify  the 
dangerous  works  to  which  his  own  is  designed  to  be 
an  antidote ;  and  he  remarks  in  the  course  of  it  that 
it  is  easier  to  live  down  than  to  write  down  in- 
flammatoiy  class  appeals.  We  are  rejoiced  to  agree 
with  him,  that  a  kind-hearted  sensible  squire  and 
a  good  parson  are  likely  to  do  more  in  the  recon- 
cilement of  classes  than  any  books  which  he  can 
write;  and  the  more,  because  he  seems  not  to  have 
mastered  the  first  element  of  success  in  his  under- 
taking— a  knowledge  of  the  mischief  to  be  en- 
countered, and  of  the  causes  which  have  produced  it. 
It  is  not  generally  supposed  that  Socialist  schemes 
or  democratic  rhetoric  have  found  their  way  very 
extensively  to  the  intellect  and  passions  of  the  agri- 
cultural poor  in  England;  nor,  so  far  as  landowners 
and  parsons  have  been  the  objects  of  invective,  has 
want  of  kindliness  and  benevolence  been  the  vice 
attributed  to  them.  Cordial  good-nature  and  a  frank 
dignity  are  the  popular  attributes  of  the  "good  old 
English  gentleman";  and  had  such  qualities  been 
sufficient  to  prevent  what  is  called,  by  a  rhetorical 
exaggeration,  in  this  country  at  least,  ''the  war  of 


272  ESSAYS. 

classes,"  that  war  would  never  have  broken  out. 
But,  unfortunately,  these  very  country  gentlemen — 
''our  territorial  aristocracy,"  as  Mr.  Disraeli  is  fond 
of  calling  them — with  all  their  virtues,  had  a  natural 
tendency  to  high  rents ;  and  being  in  possession  at 
one  time  of  paramount  legislative  power,  they  passed 
laws  which  gave  them  artificially  high  rents  at  the 
expense  of  the  rest  of  the  community.  This  is  the 
origin  of  what  was  certainly  a  combat  between  classes ; 
but  that  is  over  now.  How  far  English  laud- 
owners  have  forgotten  that  property  has  its  duties 
as  well  as  its  rights  and  enjoyments,  is  quite  another 
question;  and  if  Mr.  Caxton  wishes  to  go  into  it, 
he  will  find  that  fancy-portraits  of  a  model  squire 
and  a  model  parson  are  but  dust  in  the  balance  against 
the  facts  represented  by  the  words  rural  pauperism, 
rural  ignorance,  and  rural  brutality.  If  he  wants  to 
know — as  he  seems  to  have  rather  a  Pall  Mall  notion 
of  country  life — ^what  these  words  mean,  let  him 
consult  Sidney  Godolphin  Osborne  and  Charles 
Kingsley,  who  are  both  gentlemen  and  parsons  work- 
ing among  the  agricultural  poor. 

Granted  that  a  goodnatured  squire,  with  eight 
thousand  acres  of  land,  arable  and  pasture,  and  not 
a  mortgage  on  it,  aided  by  a  parson  with  a  decent 
income — or  even   one  who   can   give   to    the    "res 


"MT  XOVEL."  273 

angiista  domi "  the  dignity  that  high  character,  good 
manners,  and  intellectual  accomplishments,  will  bestow 
— may  do  great  things  for  a  parish.  The  sagacious 
Mrs.  Glasse  prefaces  her  receipt  for  hare-soup  by  the 
pithy  direction,  first  catch  yom-  hare.  So,  we  say, 
first  put  your  unencumbered  well-meaning  squire  and 
your  phoenix  parson  in  every  parish  in  England,  or 
in  the  majority  of  parishes,  and  then  will  be  time 
enough  to  discuss  what  good  may  be  got  out  of 
them.  It  is  the  burdened  estates  preventing  im- 
provement, and  the  parsons  careless,  sauntering,  often 
with  little  more  intellectual  cultivation  and  much 
less  practical  knowledge  and  good  sense  than  their 
farmers — these  are  the  things  that  constitute  the  cir- 
cumstances with  which  we  have  to  deal  in  too  many 
of  our  country  parishes,  and  which  have  borne  fruit 
in  the  fearful  triad  the  consideration  of  which  we 
recommended  to  Mr.  Caxton's  notice. 

But  our  novelist  does  not  seem  to  know  what 
to  do  with  his  squire  and  parson  when  he  has  found 
or  invented  them.  A  considerable  vagueness  as  to 
the  daily  life,  business,  enjoyments,  and  manners  of 
an  English  village,  must  have  come  over  the  mind 
of  Pisistratus  while  he  was  in  Australia  making  the 
fortune  which  he,  not  prescient  of  Free-trade  iniquities, 
was  rash  enough  to  invest  in  Uncle  Rowland's  acres ; 
T 


274  assAYS. 

or,  with  the  object  he  announces,  he  would  certainly 
have  given   us   some  more   definite   picture   of  our 
sweet  country  life,  with  its  immemorial  charms,  and 
of  the  duties  and  pleasures  of  a  great  proprietor  and 
a  country  rector,  than  is  to  be  found  in  Mi/  Novel. 
We  always  thought  it  spoilt  the  energetic  moral  of 
The  Caxtons,  that  Pisistratus  should  rush  back  to 
the   old   country  the  moment   he  had  made  a  few 
thousand  pounds.      He   ought   to  have  become  an 
Australian  "gentleman";  that  would  have  had  sig- 
nificance.     But   now   that   all  his   agricultural   ex- 
perience has  not  enabled  him  to  invent  a  more  novel 
or  more  useful  function  for  a  squire   and  his  bene- 
volence and  his  capital,  than  to  set  him  employing 
labour  during  a  hard  season  unproductively,  in  digging 
a  fish-pond  that  he  didn't  want,  we  begin  to  suspect 
Pisistratus  of  being  a  charlatan,  and  that  he  neither 
knows  nor  cares  much  in  his  heart  about  agriculture, 
and  country  gentlemen,  and  the  rural  poor.     It  was 
not  on  the  Palatine   that  Virgil  heard  the  hum  of 
the  bees,  or  smelt  the  sweet  thyine,  whose  music  and 
fragrance  have  been  for  nearly  two  thousand  years 
wafting   the   country — all   brightness,   melody,    and 
perfume — into  close  chambers,  into  walled-up  cities, 
into  crowded  streets,  and  dismal  alleys  ;  and  it  is  not 
in  Pall  Mall  that  one  can  learn  those  secrets  of  the 


''MY  NOVEL."  275 

country  which  if  reproduced  in  a  book  would  breathe 
from  its  pages  May-bloom  and  new-mown  hay,  calm 
delights,  unwearying  occupations,  robust  and  ani- 
mated health — not  even  in  the  country,  if  one  carried 
thither  a  Pall  Mall  mind  and  heart.  There  is  about 
Mr.  Caxton's  picture  of  Hazeldean  and  its  master 
of  the  same  name — Hazeldean  of  Hazeldean — the 
rhetorical  vagueness  and  want  of  detail  which  betray 
the  writer  aiming  at  a  generalization  but  having  no 
knowledge  or  vivid  sense  of  the  particulars ;  not  that 
the  sort  of  man  is  not  well  enough  described — novels 
and  London  experience  would  serve  for  that — ^but 
there  is  no  presentation  of  that  country-gentleman 
life,  with  its  accessaries  which  is  necessary  for  the 
attainment  of  the  author's  professed  purpose.  Imagine 
a  picture  of  our  rural  life  with  no  tenant  farmers, 
and  this  too  by  a  man  who  professes  to  exhibit  that 
life  with  a  practical  aim !  But  even  the  artist,  were 
he  of  a  high  and  conscientious  intellect,  could  not 
omit  so  essential  a  feature  of  the  moral  rustic  land- 
scape. In  fact,  Mr.  Hazeldean  of  Hazeldean  is  de- 
scribed;  and  his  park  and  house,  and  wife  and  sister, 
and  parish-stocks  and  parson  and  bailiff,  are  described 
too, — and  as  a  picture  of  still-life  we  have  no  ob- 
jection to  the  descriptions :  what  is  wanting  is  action 
and  dialogue  bearing  upon  the  main  pm-pose  of  the 
t2 


276  ussAYS. 

book, — for  of  action  and  dialogue  of  the  ordinary- 
novel  sort  there  is  plenty,  and  amusing  enough.  The 
mere  existence  of  such  folks  as  our  best  country 
gentlemen  and  their  families  may  be  a  startling 
novelty  to  an  American,  or  an  Australian  who  has  for- 
gotten the  old  country;  and  rural  discontent  may  seem 
to  such  a  stranger  at  first  sight  unaccountable,  though 
we  are  by  no  means  sure  that  he  would  not  fix  upon 
that  as  its  inevitable  cause,  with  his  colonial  feelings 
about  the  relative  value  of  independence  and  comfort. 
But  one  who  pretends  to  be  alive  to  the  animosities 
of  classes  in  England  might  know  that  he  is  con- 
tributing no  novelty  when  he  simply  informs  us  of 
the  existence  of  a  cordial,  manly,  somewhat  irritable, 
middle-aged  gentleman,  who  is  proud  of  his  eight 
thousand  acres,  considers  the  landed  interest  identical 
with  the  constitution,  but  with  all  his  pride  and 
irritability,  and  prejudice  and  narrowness,  remembers 
that  a  Hazeldean  of  Hazeldean  has  duties,  and  does 
for  "his  poor"  all  that  his  limited  conscience  and 
feeble  inventive  faculties  suggest  to  him.  These 
general  characteristics  of  the  country  gentleman,  as 
statistical  facts,  we  are  all  familiar  with.  But  our 
author  fails  both  in  his  aim  as  social  physician,  and 
in  dramatic  presentation  of  his  subject,  when  he 
contents  himself  with   a  vague  general  conception, 


''MT  NOVEL."  277 

and  labels  his  dramatis  personae,  instead  of  developing 
them  in  action.  The  Hazeldeans  of  Hazeldean  have 
for  hundreds  of  years  influenced  directly  the  villages 
in  which  they  have  lived  and  ruled,  and  have  in- 
directly contributed  peculiar  elements  to  the  national 
character,  and  no  slight  bias  to  the  national  policy. 
To  present  this  general  ti-utli  dramatically,  would 
be  to  make  it  felt  and  appreciated  more  profoundly 
and  by  a  wider  circle,  and  is  an  aim  worthy  of  an 
English  gentleman  and  literary  artist.  But  to  do 
this,  he  must  show  his  type  of  the  class  in  action,  as 
landlord,  master,  neighbour,  sportsman,  magistrate, 
a  paternal  despot  in  his  village,  a  free  and  kindly 
man  in  his  family,  a  gentleman  and  an  aristocrat 
among  his  peers.  For  it  is  by  action  in  all  these 
and  more  capacities  that  the  Hazeldeans  of  Hazeldean 
are  what  they  are ;  not  by  being  dummies,  with  all 
these  titles  painted  up  underneath  them.  And  what 
makes  My  Novel  a  more  striking  failure  is,  that  an 
active  life  of  this  range  and  variety  is  more  capable 
and  easy  of  artistic  treatment  than  that  of  most 
workers  among  us  would  be,  in  proportion  as  it  is 
at  once  less  special  and  mechanical  than  that  of  the 
professional  man,  the  merchant,  the  shopkeeper,  and 
artificer,  and  less  abstract  than  that  of  the  statesman 
and  politician.     It  deals  on  the  one  hand  with  natural 


278  :essats. 

objects  and  processes  of  production  of  vital  impor- 
tance to  a  nation,  with  agents,  phenomena,  and 
scenery,  delightful  to  the  imagination  as  well  as 
interesting  to  the  understanding;  while  on  the  other 
hand,  it  has  to  do  with  the  government  of  men,  on 
such  a  scale  as  to  admit  of  that  individualized  treat- 
ment which  gives  the  direct  human  interest,  so  diffi- 
cult to  realize  in  those  legislative  or  administrative 
processes  in  which  the  masses  are  dealt  with  on 
broad  generalizations,  and  regarded  not  so  much  as 
individual  men,  but  as  the  constituent  elements  of 
blue-books  and  statistical  tables.  To  show  all  this 
living  on  the  canvas,  would  indeed  have  been  to 
do  something  for  the  order  to  which  our  author 
belongs  by  birth,  estate,  and  county-membership. 
It  would  have  been  still  more  to  the  purpose  to 
show  how  these  same  Hazeldeans,  worthy  and  love- 
able  race  though  they  are,  are  to  develop  into  the 
landowners  of  a  new  era,  and  in  increased  knowledge, 
energy  and  enterprise,  are  not  to  lose  the  old  charm 
of  frankness,  kindness,  and  pride  of  gentlemen;  to 
make  us  feel  how  these  country  gentlemen  may 
still  be,  as  they  ought  to  be  from  their  position  and 
antecedents,  the  leaders  of  agricultural  improvement, 
the  true  aristocracy  of  an  industrial  people.  But 
for  all  this,  practical  knowledge,  and,  what  is  more, 


''MY  NOVEL."  279 

genuine  earnestness,  would  have  been  needed;  and 
it  was  easier  to  write  a  novel  of  commonplace  material 
dexterously  constructed,  and  spiced  with  a  proper 
amount  of  the  old  familiar  sentiment  and  the  new 
pseudo-Shandjism,  which  is  the  merest  reflection 
from  books. 

If,  leaving  these  country  folks  with  the  general 
acknowledgment,  that,  so  far  as  description  can  be 
a  substitute  for  dialogue  and  action,  they  are  well 
described,  and  nice  points  of  character  seized,  and 
a  pleasing  impression  of  the  Hazeldean  family  pro- 
duced, we  trace  the  purpose  of  the  author  in  the 
other  characters  of  the  book — extending  througli  four 
volumes,  but  in  quantity  nearly  equalling  three 
ordinary  novels — we  confess  ourselves  utterly  puzzled 
to  detect  any  difference  as  regards  aim  and  philo- 
sophic depth  between  this  and  any  other  novel 
by  the  same  author,  or  indeed  any  ''  fashionable 
novel"  of  the  day.  We  have  in  addition  to  the 
Hazeldeans,  father,  son,  wife,  and  sister,  and  the 
parson  and  wife,  a  Cabinet  Minister  burdened  with 
a  secret  remorse — his  friend  Lord  Lestrange,  all  that 
is  charming,  good,  and  elevated,  but  crushed  and 
repressed  by  a  regret  dating  twenty  years  back — a 
scheming  young  gentleman,  a  relative  of  the  Cabinet 
Minister,  and  the  villain  of  the  piece — a  semi-Jew 


280  X!SSAYS. 

baron,  ci-devant  solicitor,  who  lends  money  and  lives 
in  "  the  first  society,"  and  calls  the  Cabinet  Minister 
"my  dear  fellow" — an  Italian  nobleman  in  exile, 
with  his  daughter — another  Italian  nobleman  and  his 
sister,  plotting  against  the  former — a  peasant  poet, 
who  wins  his  way  to  eminence,  and  turns  out  to  be 
the  legitimate  son  of  a  gTcat  man — an  uncle  by  the 
mother's  side  of  the  poet,  who  returns  from  America 
with  a  fortune,  and  becomes  a  manufacturer  and 
finally  a  man  of  fashion  and  M.P.  for  a  borough :  all 
these  we  have,  and  a  very  complex  and  interesting 
story  is  made  out  of  their  combinations;  there  are 
even  scenes  of  great  power,  of  the  sort  that  Macready 
on  the  stage  could  have  given  prodigious  effect  to: 
but  the  purpose  of  the  book  seems  clean  gone  out 
of  the  writer's  mind,  and  we  can  conceive  any  novel 
of  the  season  doing  just  as  much  and  just  as  little 
to  knit  closer  the  ties  that  bind  class  to  class  in 
England,  or  to  make  one  class  appreciate  and  look 
with  truer  and  kindlier  eye  on  the  others. 

Indeed,  there  are  characters  in  Mt/  Novel,  and 
there  is  a  pervading  tone,  which,  so  far  from  har- 
monizing men  of  different  degrees  and  different  oc- 
cupations in  our  land,  seem  to  us  calculated,  if  they 
had  any  practical  effect,  to  do  just  the  opposite.  Mr. 
Sprott  the  tinker,  whose  pleasure  it  is  gratuitously 


"MY  NOVEL."  281 

to  enlighten  his  rustic  brethren  on  the  question  of 
their  rights  and  the  wrongs  of  the  rich,  is  not  a 
flattering  specimen  of  the  poor  man  political.  But 
let  him  pass  as  a  sketch  and  a  scarecrow.  Mr. 
Richard  Avenel,  the  maker  of  his  own  fortune,  the 
manufacturer,  and  Radical  borough  M.P.,  may  too 
be  a  portrait  from  life ;  we  do  not  doubt  that  worse 
men  and  vulgarer  men  have  sat  and  are  sitting  in  the 
House  of  Commons :  but  he  is  still  an  outrageous 
caricature,  were  he  "  liker  than  life,"  because  he  is 
presented  here  as  the  type  of  a  class,  and  as  the  com- 
mercial analogue  of  the  Hazeldeans  of  Hazeldean. 
He  is  the  prosperous  middle-class  man,  as  he  appears 
to  the  horrified  vision  of  May  Fair  and  Almacks; 
not  even  to  those  artificial  eyes  quite  devoid  of  a 
certain  rude  strength  and  rough  utility,  but  with  all 
that,  a  singularly  absurd,  coarse,  selfish,  grasping, 
tyrannical,  title-hunting,  and  unpleasant  "intrus." 
Nor,  broad  as  is  the  canvas  spread,  and  facile  as  is 
the  master's  hand,  does  that  great  "people,"  without 
which  English  "society"  is  a  capital  without  a 
column,  gain  admission  even  to  the  background  of 
the  picture,  except  as  a  group  of  undistinguishable 
grumbling  rustics  in  one  comer,  and  a  corrupt  and 
equally  undistinguishable  borough  constituency  in 
another.       A    deep    and  inbred    contempt  for    the 


282  :essats. 

middle  class  would  be  the  only  interpretation  of  a 
picture  of  English  society  which  ignored  or  only 
sarcastically  noticed  them,  were  it  not  to  be  ex- 
plained by  a  defect  in  this  author's  genius  and 
sympathies,  alike  fatal  to  him  as  philosophic  politician 
or  as  philosophic  artist. 

And  this  is,  that  of  the  English  world,  which  it 
is  his  vocation  to  paint  and  to  influence,  he  knows 
and  comprehends  and  cares  for  only  the  lightest  froth 
dancing  on  the  surface.  We  have  seen  that  in  his 
village  he  could  conceive  and  describe  his  characters 
of  squire  and  parson  with  their  families ;  below  this 
he  could  not  even  go  by  description,  and  he  fails 
to  exhibit  even  them  as  actors  in  the  real  interests 
of  their  lives.  It  is  the  same  when  his  scene  is 
transferred  to  London.  Dandies  and  fine  ladies — 
men  and  women  upon  whom  life  forces  no  serious 
duties,  and  who  are  not  great  enough  to  impose  them 
on  themselves — dress,  talk,  flirt,  and  intrigue  upon 
his  stage.  Even  the  political  life  which  is  bound 
up  in  England  with  fashionable  life  he  touches  with 
the  vaguest,  dreamiest  pencil,  and  as  if  none  of  the 
substantive  interests  and  manly  virtues  with  which 
it  is  concerned  had  ever  made  themselves  felt  by 
him.  He  can  understand  it  as  an  exciting  personal 
game,   more    absorbing   and    more    reputable    than 


''MY  novel:'  283 

hazard,  with  great  prizes  for  those  who  can  win 
them,  and  draughts  of  Nepenthe  for  those  whose 
youth  has  left  behind  it  little  hut  gnawing  regrets. 
But  as  the  highest  form  of  business,  or  the  serious 
passion  of  serious  men,  and  the  duty  of  those  whose 
rank  and  fortune  release  them  from  the  ordinary 
duties  of  the  less  wealthy  and  eminent, — ^we  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  he  cannot  form  the  conception  or 
use  the  phrases,  but  it  is  not  that  view  of  political 
life  with  which  he  sympathises,  or  which  his  genius 
aspires  to  represent  among  the  varieties  of  English 
life.  Nor,  indeed,  apart  from  motives,  does  he 
dramatically  represent  the  life  of  a  political  leader. 
Here  again  he  can  form  the  conception,  describe  the 
man ;  but  his  portrait  wants  details — that  is,  it  wants 
knowledge,  his  statesman  does  nothing  as  a  states- 
man. It  cannot  be  in  this  case  that  life  has  pre- 
sented no  models  to  the  writer.  His  manhood  must 
have  been  passed  in  the  familiar  society  of  political 
Englishmen  of  the  higher  rank.  It  must  be  that  his 
genius  is  not  receptive  of  this  sort  of  experience; 
that  it  presents  to  his  imagination  no  beauty  or 
interest;  it  is  not  available  to  him  for  purposes  of 
art.  Go  even  into  a  class  with  which  he  ought  to 
be  more  familiar  still,  among  the  men  of  letters :  we 
have  in  this  book  three  distinct  types  from  this  class, 


284  ESSAYS. 

— Leonard,  the  poet ;  Henry  Norreys,  the  man  who 
follows  literature  with  the  diligence  and  sobriety  of 
a  lawyer;  and  John  Burley,  the  reckless,  dissipated 
man  of  genius,  who  is  always  out  at  elbows, 
eloquently  drunk,  and  dies  of  delirium  tremens.  The 
two  latter  are  strongly  marked  types,  and  we  know 
precisely  the  sort  of  men  intended,  if  not  the  very 
men  who  sat  for  the  portraits.  But  this  is  know- 
ledge we  bring  to  the  book,  not  knowledge  we  get 
from  it.  There  is  little  dramatic  power  in  the  re- 
presentation;  we  easily  fill  up  features  so  strongly 
marked,  and  we  must  not  put  down  to  the  credit  of 
the  artist  what  belongs  really  to  the  subject  and  to 
our  own  familiarity  with  a  class.  Leonard,  on  the 
other  hand,  upon  whom  much  more  talk  is  lavished, 
remains  in  his  poetical  character  a  mere  nominis 
umbra;  not  a  characteristic  of  his  genius  is  made 
real  and  intelligible  to  us;  he  cannot  have  been  as 
poet  and  man  of  letters  clearly  and  distinctly  before 
the  author's  eye.  Thus,  even  with  those  classes  of 
society  with  which  he  must  be  familiar,  he  cannot 
deal  dramatically :  he  has  not  the  genius  for  pre- 
senting individual  character,  the  primary  dramatic 
faculty;  much  less  the  faculty — requiring  so  much 
study,  observation,  and  superiority  to  conventional 
prejudices,  in  addition  to  dramatic  genius — of  pre- 


"MYNOVEzr  285 

senting  class  characters  individualized,  the  distinctive 
features  of  the  man  moulded  and  coloured  \>j  the 
work  he  does,  representative  therefore  of  the  social 
function  and  peculiarities  of  their  class,  true  typal 
varieties  of  English  life.  It  is  needless  to  add,  that 
of  the  working  lives — and  that  means  the  serious 
portion  of  the  lives — of  the  merchant,  the  manu- 
facturer, the  lawyer,  and  other  "working  classes," 
not  the  faintest  representation  is  conveyed.  Baron 
Levy  and  Eandal  Leslie,  who  plot  together  against 
the  fortunes  of  their  fellow  "  varieties,"  are  the  only 
"working  men"  really  exhibited  in  that  which  is 
their  business  and  function.  In  a  word,  it  is  only 
the  amusements,  the  pleasures,  and  the  passions  of  the 
idle  members  of  English  society,  which  Sir  Edward 
Bulwer  Lytton  has  ever  succeeded  in  painting.  He 
cannot  paint  the  busy  classes,  even  in  their  pleasures 
and  their  family  life  and  their  passions — not  even  those 
who  belong  to  his  "  society" — because  the  serious 
occupations  and  interests  of  men  and  women  affect 
their  pleasures  and  their  passions;  and  with  these 
and  the  characters  they  form  he  has  no  adequate 
acquaintance  and  sympathy.  So,  as  we  said,  he 
paints  the  froth  of  society ;  and  very  gay  froth  it  is, 
and  very  pretty  bubbles  he  can  make  of  it :  but  this 
is  not  reconciling  classes,  or  giving  a  philosophic 


286  us  SAYS. 

representation  in  fiction  of  the  great  organic  being 
we  call  the  English  nation ;  and  so  far  as  3Ii/  Novel 
pretends  to  be  anything  more  than  anybody  else's 
novel,  anything  more  than  a  well-wrought  story, 
constructed  out  of  the  old  Bulwer-Lytton  materials, 
the  pretence  is  fabulous  and  the  performance  does 
not  answer  to  it.  We  have  a  novel  neither  better 
nor  worse  than  its  predecessors ;  but  we  have  not 
a  great  work  of  art  reared  on  a  basis  so  broad  as 
a  general  survey  of  English  life  in  the  earlier  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Would  such  a  work  of  art  be  possible  ?  A  mirror 
that  should  show  to  a  nation  of  workers — to  a  nation 
whose  family  hearth  is  dear  and  sacred,  to  a  nation 
that  is  earnest,  practical,  grave  and  religious — its 
own  life,  complex  and  multitudinous,  as  it  might 
reflect  itself  upon  the  imagination  of  a  great  poet, 
who  to  masculine  understanding  trained  by  obser- 
vation and  study  should  add  the  large  heart  and 
the  clear  eye  to  which  nothing  human  is  uninteresting 
or  blank  ?  Homer  did  something  of  this  sort  for  the 
Greece  of  his  day ;  Dante  for  the  Italy  of  his ; 
Shakspere  for  the  Europe  of  his.  These  men  knew 
not  such  a  word  as  commonplace  or  low,  except  as 
applied  to  what  is  stupid  and  base.  The  broad  field 
of  human  life  was  to  them  a  field  of  beauty,  richly 


''MY  NOVEL."  287 

clothed  with  food  and  flowers  for  the  sustenance  and 
nourishment  of  a  vigorous  imagination.  Art  can 
indeed  harmonize  classes  when  the  artist  is  such  as 
these, — when,  on  the  one  hand,  the  dignity  and 
worth  of  the  various  callings  that  minister  to  the 
convenience  and  promote  the  improvement  of  a  nation, 
are  illustrated  by  viewing  them  as  harmonious  parts 
of  a  great  whole ;  and  on  the  other,  when  the  men 
who  pursue  these  callings  are  represented  with  the 
interesting  varieties  impressed  upon  the  common 
humanity  by  circumstances  and  education,  but  still 
as  not  having  that  common  humanity  obliterated  and 
replaced  by  some  ludicrous  or  mean  features,  charac- 
teristic, it  may  be,  of  their  occupation,  but  not  cha- 
racteristic of  men  to  whom  an  occupation  should  be 
a  servant  and  not  a  master.  Till  art  deals  again  as 
it  did  in  its  mighty  youth  with  common  life — ^with 
that  which  is  the  business  of  a  busy  struggling 
world — neither  will  art  regain  its  strength  and  renew 
its  youth,  nor  will  common  life  reappear  to  us  with 
the  freshness  and  the  sacredness  which  it  had  to  the 
eye  of  those  who  first  became  self-conscious  and  burst 
into  song.  Dandy  literature  and  superfine  sensi- 
bilities are  tokens  and  causes  of  a  degenerate  art  and 
an  emasculate  morality ;  and  among  offenders  in  this 
way  none  has  sinned  more,  or  is  of  higher  mark  for 


288  msJYS. 

a  gibbet,  tban  the  author  of  My  Novel.  Such  books 
as  his,  when  they  appear  in  their  true  characters, 
are  judged  according  to  one  standard ;  but  when  they 
come  in  the  guise  of  profound  meaning  and  lofty 
aims,  and  give  themselves  the  airs  of  being  grand 
concrete  philosophies,  the  judge  looks  at  them  in 
quite  another  light,  tries  them  by  a  higher  code,  and 
condemns  them  accordingly,  as  well-dressed  impostors. 


Tfie  Spectator, 

February  19,   1853. 


'  BLEAK  HO  USE."  289 


DICKENS'S    "BLEAK   HOUSE." 


"I  BELIEVE  I  have  never  had  so  many  readers," 
says  Mr.  Dickens  in  the  preface  to  Bleak  Souse, 
**  as  in  this  book."  We  have  no  doubt  that  he  has 
the  pleasantest  evidence  of  the  truth  of  this  con- 
viction in  the  balance-sheet  of  his  publishing- 
account  ;  and,  without  any  more  accurate  knowledge 
of  the  statistics  of  his  circulation  than  the  indications 
furnished  by  limited  personal  observation,  we  should 
not  be  surprised  to  find  that  Punch  and  the  Times 
newspaper  were  his  only  rivals  in  this  respect.  What- 
ever such  a  fact  may  not  prove,  it  does  prove  incon- 
testably  that  Mr.  Dickens  has  a  greater  power  of 
amusing  the  book-buying  public  of  England  than 
any  other  living  writer ;  and  moreover  establishes, 
what  we  should  scarcely  have  thought  probable,  that 
his  power  of  amusing  is  not  weakened  now  that  the 
novelty  of  his  style  has  passed  away,  nor  his  public 

u 


290  SSSAYS. 

wearied  by  the  repetition  of  effects  in  which  truth 
of  nature  and  sobriety  of  thought  are  largely  sacri- 
ficed to  mannerism  and  point.  Author  and  public 
react  upon  each  other;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  a 
writer,  who  finds  that  his  peculiar  genius  and  his 
method  of  exhibiting  it  secure  him  an  extensive  and 
sustained  popularity,  should  be  deaf  to  the  remon- 
strances of  critics  when  they  warn  him  of  defects  that 
his  public  does  not  care  for,  or  urge  him  to  a  change 
of  method  which  might  very  probably  thin  his  audience 
for  the  immediate  present,  and  substitute  the  quiet 
approval  of  the  judicious  for  the  noisy  and  profitable 
applause  of  crowded  pit  and  gallery.  Intellectual 
habits,  too,  become  strengthened  by  use,  and  a  period 
comes  in  the  life  of  a  man  of  genius  when  it  is  hope- 
less to  expect  from  him  growth  of  faculty  or  cor- 
rection of  faults. 

Bleak  House  is,  even  more  than  any  of  its  pre- 
decessors, chargeable  with  not  simply  faults,  but 
absolute  want  of  construction.  A  novelist  may 
invent  an  extravagant  or  an  uninteresting  plot — may 
fail  to  balance  his  masses,  to  distribute  his  light  and 
shade — may  prevent  his  story  from  marching,  by 
episode  and  discursion :  but  Mr.  Dickens  discards 
plot,  while  he  persists  in  adopting  a  form  for  his 
thoughts  to  which  plot  is  essential,  and  where  the 


"  BLEAK  HO  USE."  291 

absence  of  a  coherent  story  is  fatal  to  continuous 
interest.  In  Bleak  House,  the  series  of  incidents 
which  form  the  outward  life  of  the  actors  and  talkers 
has  no  close  and  necessary  connexion ;  nor  have  they 
that  higher  interest  that  attaches  to  circumstances 
which  powerfully  aid  in  modifying  and  developing 
the  original  elements  of  human  character.  The 
great  Chancery  suit  of  Jarndyce  and  Jamdyce,  which 
serves  to  introduce  a  crowd  of  j)ersons  as  suitors, 
lawyers,  law-writers,  law-stationers,  and  general 
spectators  of  Chancery  business,  has  positively  not 
the  smallest  influence  on  the  character  of  any  one 
person  concerned ;  nor  has  it  any  interest  of  itself. 
Mr.  Richard  Carstone  is  not  made  reckless  and  un- 
steady by  his  interest  in  the  great  suit,  but  simply 
expends  his  recklessness  and  unsteadiness  on  it,  as 
he  would  on  something  else  if  it  were  non-existent. 
This  great  suit  is  lugged  in  by  the  head  and 
shoulders,  and  kept  prominently  before  the  reader, 
solely  to  give  Mr.  Dickens  the  opportunity  of  in- 
dulging in  stale  and  commonplace  satire  upon  the 
length  and  expense  of  Chancery  proceedings,  and 
exercises  absolutely  no  influence  on  the  characters 
and  destinies  of  any  one  person  concerned  in  it.  The 
centre  of  the  arch  has  nothing  to  do  in  keeping  the 
arch  together.  The  series  of  incidents  which  answers 
U2 


292  ESSAYS. 

to  what  in  an  ordinary  novel  is  called  plot,  is  that 
connected  with  the  relationship  of  the  heroine  (again 
analogically  speaking)  to  her  mother.  Lady  Dedlock, 
who  when  first  introduced  to  the  reader  is  a  stately 
lady  of  the  supremest  fashion,  has  before  her 
marriage  with  Sir  Leicester  Dedlock  given  hirth  to 
an  illegitimate  child,  whom  she  supposes  to  have  died 
in  its  birth,  but  who,  under  the  name  of  Esther 
Summerson,  was  brought  up  in  obscurity.  The 
truth  becomes  known  to  her  Ladyship,  and  is  ferreted 
out  by  the  family  solicitor,  Mr.  Tulkinghorn;  a 
person  of  eminently  respectable  standing,  but  incom- 
prehensible motives,  who  tortures  Lady  Dedlock  with 
mysterious  hints,  and  afterwards  direct  menaces  of 
disclosing  her  shame  to  her  husband ;  at  which  stage 
of  the  proceedings  he  is  shot  in  his  chambers.  The 
reader  is  so  artfully  tempted  to  suspect  Lady  Dedlock 
of  the  deed,  that  all  but  the  simplest  will  at  once 
conclude  that  a  theatrical  surprise  is  meditated ;  and 
accordingly,  the  real  culprit  turns  out  to  be  Lady 
Dedlock' s  French  maid,  whom  Mr.  Tulkinghorn  had 
used  in  discovering  the  secret,  and  afterwards  treated 
with  harshness  and  contumely,  that  roused  her  ma- 
lignant temper  to  a  murderous  revenge.  The  secret, 
however,  is  not  buried  with  Mr.  Tulkinghorn ;  and, 
maddened  by  fear  of  discovery  and  open  shame,  Lady 


"  BLEAK  BO  USE."  293 

Dedlock  flies  from  her  liome,  and  dies  of  exhaustion 
at  the  entrance  of  a  wretched  City  churchyard,  where 
her  lover  was  buried,  and  where  she  is  found  hy  her 
daughter  and  a  detective  policeman  who  had  been 
sent  in  quest  of  her.  Literally,  we  have  here  given 
the  whole  of  what  can  by  any  stretch  of  the  term 
be  called  the  main  plot  of  Bleak  House.  And  not 
only  is  this  story  both  meagre  and  melodramatic,  and 
disagreeably  reminiscent  of  that  vilest  of  modem 
books  Reynolds's  Mysteries  of  London^  but  it  is  so 
unskilfully  managed  that  the  daughter  is  in  no  way 
influenced  either  in  character  or  destiny  by  her 
mother's  history ;  and  the  mother,  her  husband,  the 
prying  solicitor,  the  French  maid,  and  the  whole 
Dedlock  set,  might  be  eliminated  from  the  book 
without  damage  to  the  great  Chancery  suit,  or  per- 
ceptible effect  upon  the  remaining  characters.  We 
should  then  have  less  crowd,  and  no  story ;  and  the 
book  might  be  called  "  Bleak  House,  or  the  Odd 
Folks  that  have  to  do  with  a  long  Chancery  Suit." 
This  would  give  an  exact  notion  of  the  contents  of 
a  collection  of  portraits  embracing  suitors,  solicitors, 
law-writers,  law-stationers,  money-lenders,  law-clerks, 
articled  and  not-articled,  with  their  chance  friends  and 
visitors,  and  various  members  of  their  respective 
families.     Even  then,  a  comprehensive  etcaetera  would 


294  JESSATS. 

be  needed  for  supernumeraries.  So  crowded  is  the 
canvas  which  Mr.  Dickens  has  stretched,  and  so 
casual  the  connexion  that  gives  to  his  composition 
whatever  unity  it  has,  that  a  daguerreotype  of  Fleet 
Street  at  noon-day  would  be  the  aptest  symbol  to  be 
found  for  it;  though  the  daguerreotype  would  have 
the  advantage  in  accuracy  of  representation.  In 
addition  to  all  other  faults  of  construction,  the  heroine 
is  made  to  tell  her  adventures  in  an  autobiographic 
narrative ;  and  as  this  would  not  suffice,  under  the 
conditions  of  a  mortal  existence  limited  to  one  spot 
in  space  at  a  time,  for  the  endless  array  of  persons 
who  have  to  talk  and  be  funny  and  interesting,  the 
writer  intercalates  chapters  in  his  own  person, — a 
mixture  which  has  the  awkwardest  effect,  and  is 
left  in  its  natural  awkwardness  with  no  appliances 
of  literary  skill  to  help  it  out. 

The  result  of  all  this  is,  that  Bleak  House  would 
be  a  heavy  book  to  read  through  at  once,  as  a  pro- 
perly constructed  novel  ought  to  be  read.  But 
we  must  plead  guilty  to  having  found  it  dull  and 
wearisome  as  a  serial,  though  certainly  not  from  its 
want  of  cleverness  or  point.  On  the  contrary,  almost 
everybody  in  the  book  is  excessively  funny,  that  is 
not  very  wicked,  or  very  miserable.  Wright  and 
Keeley  could  act  many   of  the  characters  without 


" BLEAK  ROUSE."  295 

alteration  of  a  word ;  Skimpole  must  be  constructed 
with  an  especial  eye  to  the  genius  of  Mr.  Charles 
Matthews ;  0.  Smith  will  of  course  choose  Krook 
or  the  sullen  bricklayer,  but  probably  the  former, 
for  his  effective  make-up,  and  the  grand  finale  by 
spontaneous  combustion, — which,  however  Nature 
and  Mr.  Lewes  may  deride  in  the  pride  of  intellect, 
the  resources  of  the  Adelphi  will  unquestionably  prove 
possible:  the  other  characters  of  the  piece  would 
be  without  difficulty  distributed  among  ladies  and 
gentlemen  familiar  to  the  London  boards.  By  all 
which  is  implied,  that  Mr.  Dickens  selects  in  his  por- 
traiture exactly  what  a  farce-writer  of  equal  ability 
and  invention  would  select, — that  which  is  coarsely 
marked  and  apprehended  at  first  sight;  that  which 
is  purely  outward  and  no  way  significant  of  the  man, 
an  oddity  of  feature,  a  trick  of  gesture  or  of  phrase, 
something  which  an  actor  can  adequately  present  and 
in  his  presentation  exhaust  the  conception.  And 
this  tendency  to  a  theatrical  method  shows  itself 
again  in  the  exaggerated  form  which  his  satire  as- 
sumes, and  which  even  when  the  satire  is  well 
directed  robs  it  of  its  wholesome  effect.  The  theatre 
is  obliged  to  drive  its  points  home,  or  they  would 
be  lost;  the  majority  of  our  actors  want  skill  to 
present  a  character  coloured  and  drawn  true  to  nature, 


296  ussATS. 

and  a  London  mixed  audience  would  not  appreciate 
the  exquisite  art  that  disdained  coarse  exaggeration. 
But  the  gross  caricature  of  the  stage  is  unbearable 
in  the  study :  we  read  with  some  other  purpose  than 
to  laugh;  and  if  the  Harold  Skimpoles  and  Mrs. 
Jelljbys  of  the  novel  are  supremely  ridiculous,  we 
only  refer  to  their  counterparts  in  real  life  to  note 
that  the  artist  has  failed  in  his  execution,  and  has 
yet  to  learn  by  a  deeper  study  of  Nature  how 
cunningly  she  blends  motives,  and  how  seldom  men 
and  women  are  entirely  absurd  or  selfish  without 
a  glimmering  and  uneasy  consciousness  that  all  is 
not  quite  as  it  should  be. 

The  love  of  strong  effect,  and  the  habit  of  seizing 
peculiarities  and  presenting  them  instead  of  cha- 
racters, pervade  Mr.  Dickens's  gravest  and  most 
amiable  portraits,  as  well  as  those  expressly  intended 
to  be  ridiculous  and  grotesque.  His  heroine  in  Bleak 
House  is  a  model  of  unconscious  goodness ;  sowing 
love  and  reaping  it  wherever  she  goes,  diffusing 
round  her  an  atmosphere  of  happiness  and  a  sweet 
perfame  of  a  pure  and  kindly  nature.  Her  un- 
consciousness and  sweet  humility  of  disposition  are 
so  profound  that  scarcely  a  page  of  her  autobiography 
is  free  from  a  record  of  these  admirable  qualities. 
With  delightful  naivete  she  writes  down  the  praises 


"  BLEAK  SO  USE."  297 

that  are  showered  upon  her  on  all  hands ;  and  it  is 
impossible  to  doubt  the  simplicity  of  her  nature, 
because  she  never  omits  to  assert  it  with  emphasis. 
This  is  not  only  coarse  portraiture,  but  utterly  untrue 
and  inconsistent.  Such  a  girl  would  not  write  her 
own  memoirs,  and  certainly  would  not  bore  one  with 
her  goodness  till  a  wicked  wish  arises  that  she  would 
either  do  something  very  "  spicey,"  or  confine  herself 
to  superintending  the  jam-pots  at  Bleak  House.  Old 
Jarndyce  himself,  too,  is  so  dreadfully  amiable  and 
supematurally  benevolent,  that  it  has  been  a  common 
opinion  during  the  progress  of  the  book,  that  he 
would  turn  out  as  great  a  rascal  as  Skimpole;  and 
the  fox  on  the  symbolical  cover  with  his  nose  turned 
to  the  East  wind  has  been  conjectured  by  subtle 
intellects  to  be  intended  for  his  double.  We  rejoice 
to  find  that  those  misanthropical  anticipations  were 
unfounded ;  but  there  must  have  been  something  false 
to  general  nature  in  the  portrait  that  suggested  them 
— some  observed  peculiarity  of  an  individual  pre- 
sented too  exclusively,  or  an  abstract  conception  of 
gentleness  and  forbearance  worked  out  to  form  a 
sharp  contrast  to  the  loud,  self-assertive,  vehement, 
but  generous  and  tender  Boythorne.  This  gentleman 
is  one  of  the  most  original  and  happiest  conceptions 
of  the  book,  a  humourist  study  of  the  highest  merit. 


298  ASSAYS. 

Mr.  Tulkinghom,  the  Dedlock  confidential  solicitor, 
is  an  admirable  study  of  mere  outward  characteristics 
of  a  class ;  but  his  motives  and  character  are  quite 
incomprehensible,  and  we  strongly  suspect  that  Mr. 
Dickens  had  him  shot  out  of  the  way  as  the  only 
possible  method  of  avoiding  an  enigma  of  his  own 
setting  which  he  could  not  solve.  Tulkinghorn's 
fate  excites  precisely  the  same  emotion  as  the  death 
of  a  noxious  brute.  He  is  a  capital  instance  of  an 
old  trick  of  Mr.  Dickens,  by  which  the  supposed 
tendencies  and  influences  of  a  trade  or  profession  are 
made  incarnate  in  a  man,  and  not  only  is  "  the  dyer's 
hand  subdued  to  what  it  works  in,"  but  the  dyer  is 
altogether  eliminated,  and  his  powers  of  motion,  his 
shape,  speech,  and  bodily  functions,  are  translated 
into  the  dye-tub.  This  gives  the  efiect  of  what  some 
critics  call  marvellous  individuality.  It  gives  dis- 
tinctness at  any  rate,  and  is  telling;  though  it  may 
be  questionable  whether  it  is  not  a  more  fatal  mistake 
in  art  than  the  careless  and  unobservant  habit  which 
many  writers  have  of  omitting  to  mark  the  efiect  of 
occupations  upon  the  development  and  exhibition  of 
the  universal  passions  and  afiections.  Conversation 
Kenge  and  Vholes,  solicitors  in  the  great  Jamdyce 
case,  have  each  their  little  characteristic  set  of  phrases, 
and  are  well-marked  specimens  of  the  genus  lawyer ; 


"  BL  EAK  HO  USE."  299 

but  as  they  only  appear  in  their  professional  capacity, 
we  are  not  entitled  to  question  them  as  to  their 
qualities  as  men. 

The  allied  families  of  Jellyby  and  Turveydrop 
are  in  Dickens's  happiest  vein,  though  Mrs.  Jellyby 
is  a  coarse  exaggeration  of  an  existing  folly.  They 
may,  we  think,  stand  beside  the  Micawbers.  Mrs. 
Jellyby's  daughter  Caddy  is  the  only  female  in  the 
book  we  thoroughly  relish:  there  is  a  blending  of 
pathos  and  fun  in  the  description  of  her  under  the 
tyranny  of  Borrioboola  Gha,  that  is  irresistible ;  and 
her  rapid  transformation  from  a  sulky,  morose,  over- 
grown child,  to  a  graceful  and  amiable  young  woman, 
under  the  genial  influence  of  Esther  Summerson,  is 
quite  Cinderella-like,  and  as  charming  as  any  fairy 
tale.  Inspector  Bucket,  of  the  Detective  Force,  bears 
evidence  of  the  careful  study  of  this  admirable  de- 
partment of  our  Police  by  the  editor  of  Household 
Words;  and,  as  in  the  case  of  Kenge  and  Vholes, 
the  professional  capacity  is  here  the  object,  and  we 
do  not  require  a  portraiture  of  the  man  and  his 
aflfections.  Poor  Joe,  the  street-sweeping  urchin,  is 
drawn  with  a  skill  that  is  never  more  effectively 
exercised  than  when  the  outcasts  of  humanity  are 
its  subjects ;  a  skill  which  seems  to  depart  in  pro- 
portion as  the  author  rises  in  the   scale   of  society 


300  £SSATS. 

depicted.  Dickens  has  never  yet  succeeded  in  catch- 
ing a  tolerable  likeness  of  man  or  woman  whose  lot 
is  cast  among  the  high-bom  and  wealthy.  Whether 
it  is  that  the  lives  of  such  present  less  that  is  out- 
wardly funny  or  grotesque,  less  that  strikes  the  eye 
of  a  man  on  the  look-out  for  oddity  and  point,  or 
that  he  knows  nothing  of  their  lives,  certain  it  is  that 
his  people  of  station  are  the  vilest  daubs;  and  Sir 
Leicester  Dedlock,  Baronet,  with  his  wife  and  family 
circle,  are  no  exceptions. 

If  Mr.  Dickens  were  now  for  the  first  time  before 
the  public,  we  should  have  found  our  space  fully 
occupied  in  drawing  attention  to  his  wit,  his  in- 
vention, his  eye  for  common  life,  for  common  men 
and  women,  for  the  everyday  aspect  of  streets  and 
houses,  his  tendency  to  delineate  the  affections  and 
the  humours  rather  than  the  passions  of  mankind ; 
and  his  defects  would  have  served  but  to  shade  and 
modify  the  praises  that  flow  forth  willingly  at  the 
appearance  among  us  of  a  true  and  original  genius. 
And  had  his  genius  gone  on  growing  and  maturing, 
clearing  itself  of  extravagance,  acquiring  art  by  study 
and  reflection,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  limit  the 
admiration  and  homage  he  might  by  this  time  have 
won  from  his  countrymen.  As  it  is,  he  must  be 
content  with   the  praise  of  amusing  the  idle   hours 


"  BLEAK  EO  USE."  30 1 

of  the  greatest  number  of  readers ;  not,  we  may  hope, 
without  improvement  to  their  hearts,  hut  certainly 
without  profoundly  aifecting  their  intellects  or  deeply 
stirring  their  emotions.  Clever  he  undoubtedly  is : 
many  of  his  portraits  excite  pity,  and  suggest  the 
existence  of  crying  social  sins ;  but  of  almost  all  we 
are  obliged  to  say  that  they  border  on  and  frequently 
reach  caricature,  of  which  the  essence  is  to  catch 
a  striking  likeness  by  exclusively  selecting  and  ex- 
aggerating a  peculiarity  that  marks  the  man  but  does 
not  represent  him.  Dickens  belongs  in  literature  to 
the  same  class  as  his  illustrator,  Hablot  Browne,  in 
design,  though  he  far  surpasses  the  illustrator  in  range 
and  power. 

The  Spectator, 

Sept,  24<A,  1853. 


302  ASSAYS. 


KINGSLEY'S    ^'WESTWARD    HO!" 


Mr.  KiNGSLEY  has  secured  the  first  requisite  of 
success  as  a  novelist,  by  choosing  an  interesting  sub- 
ject, which  both  excites  and  justifies  the  powers  of 
art  and  genius  expended  upon  it.  If  it  has  been 
at  times  necessary  to  protest  against  the  application 
of  the  principle  of  "  cui  bono "  to  works  of  art,  it 
has  been  because  the  application  has  been  improperly 
made,  the  principle  wrongly  or  narrowly  interpreted, 
not  because  art  is  exempt  from  the  necessity  of 
being  available  for  something  higher  than  the  pastime 
of  inactive  minds  and  jaded  energies.  To  make  us 
wiser  and  larger-hearted — to  conduct  us  through  a 
wider  range  of  experience  than  the  actual  life  of 
each  generally  permits — to  make  us  live  in  the  lives 
of  other  types  of  character  than  our  own,  or  than 
those  of  our  daily  acquaintance — to  enable  us  to  pass 
by  sympathy  into  other  minds    and  other    circum- 


"  WESTWAEB  HO !"  303 

stances,  and  especially  to  train  the  moral  nature  by 
sympathy  with  noble  characters  and  noble  actions, 
— these  are  the  high  aims  of  fiction  in  the  hands  of 
its  master  wielders ;  these  are  the  aims  which  have 
raised  novels  and  dramas  to  an  importance  which 
Nature  herself  indicates  in  assigning  to  their  pro- 
duction those  powers  which  the  consent  of  all  ages 
allows  to  rank  supreme  among  the  gifts  of  the  human 
race. 

Mr.  Kingsley's  object  is  to  paint  the  types  of 
character,  and  the  sort  of  training,  by  which  Eng- 
land rose  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  to  be 
mistress  of  the  seas,  and  a  model  to  all  Europe  of 
material  prosperity  and  national  unity — a  powerful, 
a  wealthy,  a  free,  and  a  happy  people.  He  does 
not,  of  course,  attempt  any  such  absurd  impossibility 
as  to  epitomize  in  the  fortunes  and  career  of  a  single 
man  or  family  the  infinitely  complex  elements  and 
agencies  that  go  to  make  up  the  life  of  a  nation 
at  any  one  time ;  nor  does  he  select  the  central 
Government,  with  its  Court,  its  Administration,  and 
its  Parliament,  and  write  a  political  novel  to  illustrate 
the  policy  of  Elizabeth,  and  the  various  wisdom  and 
talent  of  her  Ministers,  with  the  hearty  yet  perfectly 
independent  action  of  the  national  assembly.  He 
takes  as  his  type  of  Elizabethan  character  and  ac- 


304  ESSAYS. 

tivity  a  Devonshire  youth,  of  good  "birth,  and  in  no 
way  distinguished  from  other  sons  of  country  gentle- 
men by  either  fortune,  or  learning,  or  genius,  but  of 
great  bodily  strength,  of  lively  aiFections  and  sweet 
temper,  combined  with  a  marked  propensity  to  combat 
from  his  earliest  years ;  a  character  that  when  trained 
to  self-denial  and  a  high  sense  of  duty  to  God  and 
his  country,  and  practised  in  the  arts  of  war  and 
seamanship,  presents  perhaps  as  perfect  a  specimen 
of  glorious  manhood  as  men  have  ever  obeyed  with 
implicit  confidence  and  women  worshipped  as  their 
natural  liege  lord  and  defender.  Beside  Amyas 
Leigh  stand  grouped  his  brother  Frank,  charmingly 
contrasted  with  him  in  all  points  except  his  pure 
and  warm  affections  and  chivalrous  honour ;  and 
his  mother,  a  saintly  lady,  whom  early  experience 
of  calamity  has  sobered  down  to  perfect  serenity, 
and  whom  later  sorrow  and  bereavement  transfigure 
to  almost  unearthly  intensity  of  faith,  love,  and  re- 
signation. The  worthies  of  Devon — Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  Sir  Richard  Grenville,  Admirals  Hawkins 
and  Sir  Francis  Drake ;  families  whose  names  are 
still  the  bright  stars  of  the  West — Fortescues,  Chi- 
chesters,  Carys — blend  in  the  action  and  interest  of 
the  scene.  Burghers  of  Bideford,  plotting  Jesuits, 
Romanist  country  families,  mariners  who  have  sailed 


«  WESTWARD  Eor  305 

round  the  world  with  Drake,  mariners  who  have  seen 
Columbus  and  Cabot  and  Vasco  de  Gama,  country 
parsonSj  gentlemen  adventurers,  Spanish  dons,  South 
American  Indians,  and  victims  of  the  Inquisition, 
crowd  the  story  with  variety  of  character  and  in- 
cident. The  scene  itself  spreads  out  from  Bideford, 
near  which  is  the  family  seat  of  the  Leighs,  through 
North  and  South  Devon,  to  London  in  a  passing 
glance;  to  Ireland  and  its  wars,  in  which  Amyas 
takes  a  distinguished  part ;  to  the  Spanish  main,  and 
the  boundless  South  American  continent,  where  in- 
deed the  most  interesting  part  of  the  adventures 
take  place ;  back  again  to  Bideford,  and  Plymouth ; 
whence  Amyas  sails  in  command  of  his  ship,  to 
take  part  in  that  most  memorable  sea-fight  the 
twelve-days  battle,  in  which  the  Spanish  Armada 
was  chased  from  Plymouth  round  the  South  and  East 
coasts  of  England,  and  finally  broke,  fled,  or  went  to 
the  bottom,  some  escaping  to  Norway,  a  few  under 
Medina-Sidonia  back  to  Spain;  and  England  was 
saved,  and  the  long  dream  of  Spanish  ambition 
and  Popish  vengeance  dispelled  for  ever.  Through 
all  this  variety  of  incident  and  character  Mr.  Kingsley 
never  flags,  never  becomes  wearisome.  His  men  and 
women  live  in  his  pages,  talk  life  and  not  book ; 
and   our   sympathies  move  with  them,   so  that,  as 

X 


S06  JESSJYS. 

in  life,  we  do  not  impatiently  look  for  the  issue,  but 
take  an  ever  new  interest  in  the  details  of  the  pro- 
gress towards  the  issue.     There  may  be  differences 
of  opinion   as  to    the    estimate   Mr.    Kingsley  has 
formed  of  particular  men  of  the  age ;  there  certainly 
will  be  opposition  elicited  by  some  of  his  opinions  on 
the  religious  manifestations  of  that  age ;  Papist  and 
Puritan  will  scoff  almost  alike  at  his  estimate  of  the 
Church-of-Englandism  of  that  day ;   and  while  the 
Dissenter  of  today  has  little  reason  to  quarrel  with 
the  novelist  for  embodying  Elizabethan  Puritanism 
in  such  a  stem  warrior,  admirable  seaman  and  gunner, 
true  comrade,  Spaniard-hating  and  God-fearing  Eng- 
lishman, as  Salvation  Yeo  of  Clovelly,  we  are  not 
disposed  to  accept  Mr.  Kingsley's  types  as  expressive 
of  any  but  one  and  that  the  worst  form  of  Romanism 
in  the  age  he  depicts.     But  this  is  not  so  much  un- 
fairness  on  his  part,   as  a  necessity  of  his  story, 
which  leads  him  to  deal  with  plotting  Jesuits,  semi- 
nary priests,    and   Spanish    American   bishops  and 
inquisitors,   rather  than  with  the  body  of  English 
Catholic  gentry,  to  whose  loyalty  he  bears  high  and 
notoriously  well-deserved  testimony.      Still,  the  re- 
sult is  a  somewhat  jarring  sense  of  a  partial  repre- 
sentation in  this   respect,  which  we  wish   the   con- 
structive skill  of  the  writer  had  been  employed  to 


"  WESTWARD  HO  .'"  307 

obviate;  though  we  -would  not,  for  any  breadth  of 
charity  or  comprehensive  philosophy,  lose  or  weaken 
the  intensity  of  his  conviction  that  the  Protestant 
cause  in  that  day  was  the  cause  of  God,  of  freedom, 
of  English  nationality,  of  American  United  States, 
and  of  all  which  has  made  Europe  different  from 
what  it  would  have  become  had  the  Spanish  dream  of 
universal  empire  and  the  destruction  of  Protestantism 
been  realized.  It  was  this  conviction  that  was  at 
the  root  of  the  heroism  of  our  land  in  that  day,  and 
it  is  the  reflective  glow  of  this  conviction  that  gives 
its  spirit-stirring  trumpet  tone  to  Mr.  Kingsley's  re- 
presentation of  that  heroism. 

We  began  by  -saying  that  Mr.  Kingsley  had 
chosen  his  theme  well,  because  of  its  interest  at  any 
time  to  us  Englishmen,  descendants  of  the  heroes  of 
the  Armada.  But  just  now  it  seems  especially  op- 
portune that  we  should  look  back  for  practical  lessons, 
for  encouragement,  direction,  and  warning,  to  an  age 
when  great  actions  seemed  the  spontaneous  instinct 
of  the  community,  and  success  rose  to  the  amplest 
range  of  aspiration.  If  miracles  were  wrought  then, 
they  were  wrought  by  men  using  human  means, 
under  that  agency  which  will  always  work  miracles 
— under  the  inspiration  of  a  faith  in  righteousness 
being  the  law  and  order  of  the  world — of  a  manful 
X2 


308  mSAYS. 

resolution  to  dare  everything  for  the  right — of  a 
prudence  to  judge  of  means — of  a  gallant  spirit  to 
hold  life  and  labour  and  pain  all  weU  spent  in  the 
service  of  their  country,  and  in  the  cause  of  God, 
freedom,  and  human  happiness.  The  same  spirit, 
employing  means  and  mechanical  skill  of  which 
Elizabeth's  heroes  never  dreamed  in  their  wildest 
aspirations,  will  again  produce  proportionate  results. 
But  we  talk  of  righteousness  and  faith  in  God,  and 
believe  in  mechanical  forces  calculable  by  measure- 
ment and  arithmetic;  we  talk  of  genius  and  strong 
will,  and  believe  in  routine  and  a  system  of  mutual 
check;  we  believe  in  these,  or  rather  we  have  no 
belief  in  anything,  and  this  is  the  expression  of  our 
unbelief,  our  incapacity,  our  helplessness,  our  despair. 
Welcome  war,  welcome  pestilence,  welcome  anything 
that  will  rouse  the  once  noble  English  nation  from 
this  paralysis  of  true  human,  true  national  life  ;  that 
will  force  us  once  more  to  seek  out  clear  heads  and 
brave  hearts,  and  thank  God,  as  for  His  choicest  gifts, 
for  men  who  will  work  themselves,  and  govern  us 
and  teach  us  to  work — for  men  like  those  worthies 
"whom,"  as  Mr.  Kingsley  says  in  a  hearty  dedi- 
cation of  his  book  to  the  Bishop  of  New  Zealand  and 
Rajah  Sir  James  Brooke,  "Elizabeth,  without  dis- 
tinction of  rank  or  age,  gathered  round  her  in  the 
ever-glorious  wars  of  her  great  reign." 


«  WESTWARD  SO !"  309 

Westward  Ho  !  partakes  much  more  of  the  cha- 
racter of  biography  and  history  than  of  the  ordinary 
sentimental  novel.  Love  plays  a  great  part  in  the 
progress  of  the  story,  as  it  does  in  the  lives  of  most 
men;  but  it  is  as  motive  influencing  character  and 
determining  action  that  it  is  exhibited,  not  as  itself 
the  sole  interest  of  life,  the  single  feeling  which 
redeems  human  existence  from  dulness  and  inward 
death.  The  love  which  acts  on  the  career  and 
character  of  Amyas  Leigh  does  not  spend  itself  in 
moonlight  monologues  or  in  passionate  discourses  with 
its  object;  nor  does  the  story  depend  for  its  interest 
upon  the  easily  roused  sympathy  of  even  the  stupidest 
readers  with  the  ups  and  downs,  the  fortunes  and 
emotions,  of  a  passion  common  in  certain  degrees 
and  certain  kinds  to  all  the  race.  It  is  no  such 
narrow  view  of  life  that  is  presented  here,  but  rather 
that  broad  sympathy  with  human  action  and  human 
feeling  in  its  manifold  completeness  which  gives  to 
art  a  range  as  wide  as  life  itself,  and  throws  a  con- 
secrating beauty  over  existence  from  the  cradle  to 
the  grave,  wherever  human  affections  act,  wherever 
human  energies  find  their  object  and  their  field, 
wherever  the  battle  between  right  and  wrong,  between 
sense  and  spirit,  is  waged — wherever  and  by  what- 
ever means  characters  are  trained,  principles  strength- 


310  ASSAYS. 

ened,  and  humanity  developed.  And  this  compre- 
hensive character — displaying  itself  in  assigning  its 
true  relative  value  to  each  thing — we  take  to  be  the 
distinguishing  test  of  high  art,  and  that  which  marks 
it  out  from  all  mere  sentimentalism,  prettiness, 
eclecticism,  or  whatever  other  name  we  may  give  to 
man's  attempts  to  reduce  nature  to  some  standard 
of  his  own  taste,  or  the  taste  of  a  particular  age  or 
clique,  instead  of  endeavouring  to  enlarge  his  heart 
and  open  his  eyes  to  see  and  feel  the  wonders  and 
the  splendours  which  are  poured  down  from  heaven 
on  earth,  in  the  least  of  which  as  in  the  greatest  the 
Infinite  reveals  Himself  for  those  who  through  the 
letter  can  penetrate  to  the  spirit. 


The  Spectator, 

March  17,  1855. 


"NOCTJES  JMBROSIAN^r  311 


WILSON'S    "NOCTES   AMBEOSIAN^." 


Many  of  the  causes  which  contributed  to  the  interest 
excited  by  the  Noctes  Ambrosiance,  on  their  first 
appearance  in  successive  numbers  of  Blackwoocfs 
Magazine,  have  ceased  to  operate.  Political  measures 
round  which  parties  were  then  struggling  with  fierce 
passion  and  loud  mutual  denunciation  have  been 
built  as  firmly  into  the  constitution  as  Magna  Charta 
itself.  The  men  engaged  in  those  conflicts  have 
become  historical  personages,  or  have  fallen  into  utter 
oblivion;  in  either  case  escaping  from  the  partial 
judgments  of  that  time,  and  no  longer  lending  a  charm 
not  its  own  to  panegyric  or  invective.  So,  too,  the 
literary  celebrities  of  that  day  have  either  attained 
a  fixed  rank  or  been  forgotten ;  we  no  longer  interest 
ourselves  in  disputes  about  their  claims.  And  in  the 
case  of  both  political  and  literary  personages,  what 
was  then  fresh  and  piquant  personality  has  become 


312  USSATS. 

familiar  history  or  stale  gossip ;  pointed  allusions 
have  lost  their  force,  half-revelations  have  been 
superseded ;  and  we  wonder,  as  we  read,  at  the 
amount  of  feeling  exhibited  towards  men  and  women 
who  are  now,  for  the  most  part,  shadowy  names,  with 
scarce  an  association  connecting  .them  with  our  living 
sympathies.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this  inevitable  effect 
of  the  lapse  of  twenty  or  thirty  years  upon  papers 
discussing  so  largely  topics  and  people  of  temporary 
interest,  such  is  the  high  quality  of  the  genius 
lavished  upon  them,  that  the  public  will  read  by  far 
the  larger  portion  of  the  Noctes  with  as  much  delight 
as  at  first.  They  appear  now  with  a  claim  to  rank 
as  English  classics — as  the  choicest  production  of 
their  author,  one  of  the  most  highly  endowed  men 
of  his  time.  Their  chief  interlocutor,  the  eidolon  of 
the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  is  ranked  by  Professor  Wilson's 
admirers  with  the  most  forcible  characters  known  to 
us  through  history  or  created  by  fiction.  Thus,  Pro- 
fessor Ferrier,  introducing  the  Noctes  with  a  preface, 
says — "  In  wisdom,  the  Shepherd  equals  the  Socrates 
of  Plato;  in  humour,  he  surpasses  the  Falstaff  of 
Shakspere;  clear  and  prompt,  he  might  have  stood 
up  against  Dr.  Johnson  in  close  and  peremptory 
argument ;  fertile  and  copious,  he  might  have  rivalled 
Burke  in  amplitude  of  declamation."     Socrates,  Fal- 


''NOCTES  AMBROSIANJE."  313 

staflf,  Dr.  Johnson,  and  Burke,  all  in  one !  and  that 
one  talking  a  broad  Doric,  that  seems  to  an  English 
ear  the  native  dialect  of  humour,  plastic  alike  to 
pathos,  fun,  and  homely  shrewdness ;  a  shepherd,  too, 
knowing  all  the  shy  charms  of  nature  in  remotest 
haunts  of  solitude  and  silence — all  the  racy  cha- 
racteristics of  pastoral  life  and  pastoral  people,  their 
joys,  their  sorrows,  their  pleasures,  and  their  business. 
Estimated  thus,  the  Shepherd  of  the  Nodes  would 
really  be  the  most  marvellous  of  the  creations  of  that 
literature  which  stands  highest  among  the  literatures 
of  Europe  for  its  presentation  of  human  character. 
And,  with  some  qualification,  the  estimate  is  not  so 
absurd  as  at  first  sight  our  habitual  reverence  for 
such  names  as  Professor  Ferrier  has  brought  into  his 
comparison  would  consider  it. 

The  truth  is,  that  Wilson,  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable men  that  ever  lived  for  the  variety  and 
strength  of  his  powers,  has  thrown  into  the  Shep- 
herd's talk  the  teeming  activity  of  his  own  mind  and 
heart ;  and  so  far  as  characters  are  displayed  in  life, 
and  in  that  fiction  which  reflects  life,  solely  by  their 
desultory  talk,  the  Shepherd  may  fairly  be  matched 
with  any  one.  If  it  was  simply  as  a  shrewd  talker 
that  we  knew  Socrates — if  FalstaiF  was  to  us  simply 
a  sayer  of  good  things,  Dr.  Johnson  a  hard  hitter 


314  ESSAYS. 

in  argument,  Burke  a  copious  and  splendid  declaimer 
— ^Wilson's  Shepherd  might  without  exaggeration  be 
put  upon  a  level  with  all  these  remarkable  characters. 
He  talks  as  shrewdly  as  Socrates,  as  wittily  as 
Falstaff,  as  weightily  as  Johnson,  as  splendidly  as 
Burke;  or,  at  least,  the  exaggeration  of  such  as- 
sertions might  pass  without  challenge.  He  does  talk 
more  shrewdly,  wittily,  weightily,  and  splendidly, 
than  any  man  we  have  the  pleasure  of  knowing. 
But  the  talk  of  these  famous  personages  is  all  related 
to  action  or  serious  discussion — is  the  genuine  utter- 
ance of  the  men  in  contact  with  facts,  either  engaged 
in  the  business  of  life  or  in  the  pursuit  of  truth. 
Something  more  is  revealed  by  it  than  a  kaleidoscope 
quickness  and  variety  of  intellect ;  it  displays  at  once 
and  subserves  the  will  and  the  affections.  Socrates 
talks  cleverly,  and  gets  his  opponent  generally  into 
chancery — a  feat  which  would  raise  him  to  the  rank 
of  a  first-rate  sophist;  but  we  value  him  for  his 
genuine  earnestness  in  pursuit  of  truth,  his  plainness, 
his  fearlessness,  his  candour,  his  pure  and  aspiring 
soul — dialectic  is  simply  his  instrument.  Falstaff  is 
witty,  but  not  wittier  than  Sheridan  or  Hook :  what 
we  admire  in  him  is  the  profound  sincerity  of  his 
sensual  abasement — -the  devotion  of  the  whole  man, 
wit,  understanding,  reason,  conscience,  to  the  pleasures 


"NOCTHS  AMBROSIAN^."  315 

of  the  animal  man — his  utter  insensibility  to  the 
higher  claims  and  enjoyments  of  his  humanity ;  it  is 
a  character,  not  a  talker,  that  delights  us  in  the  fat 
knight.  So  in  Johnson,  and  Burke,  the  talk  is 
merely  instrumental,  symptomatic  of  a  whole  man 
talking.  But  in  the  Shepherd  of  the  Nodes  the  talk 
is  the  be-all  and  the  end-all ;  the  man  is  a  talker 
and  little  else ;  and  we  identify  him  with  his  talk 
almost  as  little  as  we  do  an  actor  with  his  part. 
This  is  partly  owing  to  the  form  adopted :  desultory 
talk  ''de  omnibus  rebus  et  quibusdam  aliis"  can 
never  thoroughly  develop  a  character — can  do  nothing 
but  show  a  man's  versatility  of  intellect  and  command 
of  language.  But  it  is  also  owing  to  the  fact  that 
one  of  the  Shepherd's  traits  is  the  queerest  and  most 
grotesque  vanity — almost  the  only  trait  borrowed 
from  the  original  model ;  and  that  he  is  throughout 
represented  as  talking  for  eflfect,  to  show  off  his 
eloquence.  We  have  not,  consequently,  a  character 
completely  developed,  but  merely  a  man  who  can 
assume  all  characters  for  the  nonce;  can  be  funny, 
pathetic,  wise,  descriptive,  poetical,  or  sensual,  just 
as  the  play  requires.  And  he  is  so  palpably  acting 
that  he  tires  us  by  his  cleverness  of  assumption,  just 
as  a  hired  mountebank  would  tire  us  by  insisting  on 
showing  off  his  powers  of  mimicry  in  conversation. 


316  ASSAYS. 

Another  objection  to  the  Nodes  as  a  whole  may 
be  conveyed  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Foster,  who,  in  his 
admirable  life  of  Goldsmith,  says — ''Of  the  many 
clever  and  indeed  wonderful  writings  that  from  age 
to  age  are  poured  forth  into  the  world,  what  is  it  that 
puts  upon  the  few  the  stamp  of  immortality,  and 
makes  them  seem  indestructible  as  nature?  what  is 
it  but  their  wise  rejection  of  everything  superfluous  ?" 
We  estimate  works  of  art,  as  we  estimate  characters 
in  life,  more  by  their  unity  and  completeness  than 
by  their  richness  and  profusion  of  raw  material.  It 
is  coherence,  order,  purpose,  which  make  the  differ- 
ence between  Nature  and  Chaos.  And  if  all  the  wit, 
the  wisdom,  the  geniality,  and  the  imagination  of  the 
Noctes  AmhrosianoB  fail  to  secure  them  a  place  among 
English  classics,  it  will  be  because  these  are  reduced 
to  no  order,  subordinated  to  no  general  purpose, 
organized  into  no  whole.  They  will  even  then  re- 
main the  very  best  magazine  papers  that  were 
probably  ever  written. 


The  Spectator, 

November  24,  1855. 


COMTE'S  FOSITIVE  FEIZOSOFST.  317 


COMTE'S    POSITIVE    PHILOSOPHY. 


The  "Cours  de  Philosophie  Positive"  is  at  once 
a  compendious  cyclopaedia  of  science  and  an  exhi- 
bition of  scientific  method.  It  defines  rigorously 
the  characteristics  of  the  several  orders  of  phenomena 
with  which  the  particular  sciences  are  concerned, 
arranges  them  in  an  ascending  scale  of  complexity 
and  specialty  beginning  with  mathematics  and  ending 
with  social  physics  or  sociology,  and  assigns  to  each 
science  its  proper  method  in  accordance  with  the 
nature  of  the  phenomena  to  be  investigated.  The 
connexion  between  the  sciences  thus  arranged  is,  that 
the  laws  of  each  preceding  order  of  phenomena  are 
operative  in  that  which  succeeds,  but  in  combination 
with  a  new  order  of  laws,  the  study  of  which  con- 
stitutes the  advanced  science.  As  might  be  supposed, 
the  sciences  have  historically  developed  themselves 
in  accordance  with  this  arrangement,  the  simpler  and 


318  USSAYS. 

more  general  first,  the  more  complex  and  special 
afterwards.  Thus  we  obtain  not  only  a  lucid  and 
rational  classification,  but  a  logical  genealogy  and 
an  historical  law  of  evolution,  forming  a  sure  basis 
for  education  and  a  luminous  indication  of  future 
progress.  An  arrangement  so  simple  in  its  principle, 
so  fruitfal  in  its  results,  one  may  well  be  astonished 
at  having  had  so  many  ages  to  wait  for.  It  is,  how- 
ever, unquestionable  that,  though  half-formed  sug- 
gestions of  such  a  classification  are  here  and  there 
to  be  found,  and  though  Hegel  in  particular,  pro- 
ceeding on  a  totally  different  method,  has  reached  an 
arrangement  that  superficially  resembles  M.  Comte's, 
yet  to  the  latter  belongs  the  honour  of  having 
thoroughly  worked  out  the  conception,  of  having 
rigorously  determined  and  decisively  constituted  the 
filiation,  of  having  exhibited  the  relations  between 
phenomena  and  method,  and  finally  of  having  ac- 
curately conceived  and  initiated  the  crowning  science 
of  sociology,  with  its  two  departments  of  social  statics 
and  social  dynamics,  dealing  the  one  with  the  con- 
ditions of  the  stability  of  human  societies,  the  other 
with  the  laws  of  their  progress.  Because  it  is  not 
merely  a  cyclopasdia  of  scientific  facts,  but  an  exhi- 
bition of  the  methods  of  human  knowledge  and  of  the 
relations  between  its  different  branches,  M.  Comte 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  FEILOSOPHT.  319 

calls  his  work  philosophy ;  and  because  it  limits  itself 
to  what  can  be  proved,  he  terms  it  positive  philosophy. 
That,  during  the  twenty  years  since  the  appear- 
ance of  the  first  volume  of  the  original  work,  it  has 
powerfully  influenced  the  thoughts  and  writings  of 
the  most  exact  minds  engaged  in  speculation  in  this 
country,  will  be  doubtful  to  no  one  who  compares 
the  books  published  on  the  general  principles  and 
mutual  relations  of  science  before  and  since  its  ap- 
pearance. That  it  has  given  a  far  more  special  and 
directing  impulse  to  those  writers  than  most  of  them 
have  been  or  would  be  willing  publicly  to  avow, 
is  Miss  Martineau's  opinion,  and  one  of  her  motives 
— a  higlily  honourable  one — for  presenting  a  trans- 
lation of  the  original  work  to  the  English  public. 
The  motive  assigned  by  Miss  Martineau  for  this 
assumed  reluctance  to  credit  Comte  with  his  due 
share  of  influence,  is  one  likely  enough  to  have  pre- 
vailed with  all  English  writers  who  were  not  very 
far  above  the  common  level  in  moral  courage,  or  very 
far  below  it  in  insolent  bravado  and  conceited  con- 
tempt for  the  opinions  and  sympathies  of  their 
countrymen.  For  M.  Comte's  book,  besides  being, 
as  we  have  described  it,  a  treatise  on  science  and 
scientific  methods,  is  also  a  fierce  polemic  against 
theology  and  metaphysics,  with  aU  the  notions  and 


320  ASSAYS. 

sentiments  that  have  their  roots  in  them,   all  the 
"beliefs  and  hopes  which  are  considered,  among  us,  if 
not  the  foundations,  at  least  indispensable  supports 
of  morality.      M.  Comte  scornfully  denounces  theism 
and  atheism  as  equally  unwarrantable  intrusions  into 
a  province  beyond  the  faculties,  and  barren  for  the 
needs  of  man ;  he  treats  our  hope  of  a  life  beyond  the 
grave  as  a  childish  chimera;   mind  he  scouts  as  a 
metaphysical  entity,   on   a  level  with  the   "occult 
causes "  of  the  schoolmen ;   Him  whom  other  men 
worship  as  the  source  and  sustainer  of  their  own  lives, 
and  of  all  the  powers  at  work  around  them,  he  treats 
as  a  poor  old  dethroned  Fetish — a  roi  faineant,  kept 
up,  like  the  descendant  of  the  Great  Mogul,  from 
unmeaning  habit  of  accustomed  reverence,  or  the  idle 
prejudices  and  selfish  interests  of  metaphysicians  and 
theologians — a    useless   ceremonial,   from  which    all 
power  has  been  transferred  to  positive  laws,  and  all 
glory  to  their  discoverers.     In  the  universe  of  man 
and  the  worlds  he  resolves  to  see  only  a  vast  con- 
sensus of  forces,  an  infinite  whirl  and  rush  of  phe- 
nomena, of  which  we  can  learn  by  observation  the 
uniform  coexistences  and  sequences,  but  know  not, 
nor  need  to  know,  whence  they  flashed  into  being, 
what  power  sustains   them,  or  what  their  mighty 
movements   mean.       What    appears,  we    may  and 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  FSIZOSOPHY,  321 

should  investigate — to  what  is,  we  have  no  access,  no 
ascertainable  relation.  M.  Comte  aims,  in  fact,  not 
simply  at  renovating  science  by  reforming  its  general 
conceptions  and  completing  its  range,  but  at  rigidly 
limiting  human  beliefs  and  speculations,  and  on  the 
basis  of  demonstrable  knowledge  of  phenomena  con- 
stituting a  reformed  order  of  practical  life  and  society. 
It  was  long  ago  said  by  one  of  our  most  brilliant 
living  wits,  "  There  is  no  God,  and  Miss  Martineau 
is  his  prophet";  and  it  therefore  excites  no  sui-prise 
that  the  same  pretensions,  which  are  supposed  to 
have  deterred  other  English  writers  from  acknow- 
ledging their  obligation  to  the  French  philosopher, 
should  have  induced  her  to  undertake  the  laborious 
task  of  translating  and  condensing  his  six  bulky 
volumes  into  two.  She  sees  in  his  strict  limitation 
of  the  human  faculties  to  phenomenal  knowledge — 
in  his  treatment  of  all  that  cannot  be  demonstrated 
by  sensible  experience  as  chimeras — a  means  not 
otherwise  procurable  of  remedying  the  intellectual 
anarchy  of  her  country,  of  reinstating  firm  beliefs 
and  impregnable  principles  in  religion,  morals,  and 
politics,  and  so  putting  a  final  check  upon  the  spread 
of  weak  and  inconsistent  practice,  general  faintness 
of  heart  and  uncertainty  of  mind.  For  she  too  thinks 
that   all  the  old  beliefs  and  philosophies  were   but 

T 


322  ussATS. 

leading-strings  and  "baby-jumpers  for  our  race;  that 
they  have  long  encumbered  the  movements  of  the 
growing  boy,  and  must  be  cleared  off — sent  abroad, 
perhaps,  for  the  aborigines  of  Australia  and  Terra  del 
Fuego,  who  have  yet  to  pass  through  the  phases  of 
Western  Europe,  though  the  duration  of  the  crisis 
may  be  materially  abridged  for  them  by  the  influence 
of  the  nations  which  have  preceded  them  in  the  course 
of  human  evolution. 

It  is  these  pretensions  of  the  positive  philosophy 
with  which  alone  we  profess  to  deal,  because  it  is  of 
these  alone  that  there  can  be  any  dispute  amongst 
competent  persons.  If  observation  of  phenomena  is 
our  sole  source  of  knowledge,  no  one  questions  but 
that  the  "  inductive  canons "  are  the  guides  to  ac- 
curate observation  and  the  rules  of  safe  generalization. 
The  assumption  is,  however,  somewhat  extensive; 
and  M.  Comte  nowhere  attempts  to  demonstrate 
this  fundamental  position  of  his  system,  unless  it 
is  demonstration  to  assert  that  theology  and  me- 
taphysics have  been  barren  speculations,  whereas 
positive  science  has  gone  on  from  age  to  age  extend- 
ing its  domain  and  adding  to  men's  practical  and 
demonstrable  knowledge.  This,  however,  our  space 
will  not  allow  us  to  discuss.  Nor  can  we  do  more 
even  with  respect  to  these  pretensions  than  to  speak 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  PHILOSOPET.  323 

of  some  preliminary  considerations  "which  lie  in  the 
way  of  their  admission.  As  a  series  of  treatises  on 
the  various  sciences,  M.  Comte's  work  might  be  fall 
of  errors  of  detail  without  much  impairing  its  value 
as  a  philosophic  classification ;  and  in  fact,  with  respect 
to  all  but  the  simple  sciences,  even  if  it  had  been 
without  blemish  at  the  time  of  its  publication,  years 
are  so  rapidly  developing  our  knowledge  that  it  could 
have  retained  its  perfection  only  a  short  time.  As 
a  treatise  on  method,  it  falls  so  far  short  of  Mr.  J.  S. 
Mill's  Logic  in  exhaustive  treatment  and  in  clear 
terse  style,  and  has  besides  been  so  ably  criticised 
by  him  in  various  parts  of  that  admirable  work,  that 
it  is  superfluous  to  point  out  its  special  defects  to 
the  English  student  of  philosophy.  In  spite  of  an- 
tiquated details  and  of  special  defects,  however,  the 
work  will  always  retain  a  most  distinguished  place 
in  the  history  of  opinion ;  and  to  it  must  the  student 
resort  who  shall  hereafter  wish  to  see  the  form  which 
the  science  of  social  physics  acquired  in  the  hands 
of  its  first  rigorously  positive  investigator.  We  have 
simply  to  inquire  what  its  great  claims  are  to  supply 
the  place  of  those  theological  and  metaphysical  beliefs 
and  sentiments  which  it  proposes  to  supersede — what 
support  it  can  lend  to  moral  principles  and  noble 
t2 


324  ESSAYS. 

conduct,  equivalent  to  the  aids  of  which   it  would 
deprive  us. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  a  preliminary  objection 
would  ordinarily  be  taken  against  the  pretensions  of 
positivism  to  exclude  all  other  motives  to  action,  and 
other  grounds  of  assurance,  in  the  fact  that  except 
for  the  simpler  sciences,  from  geometry  to  chemistry 
— physiology  rapidly  advancing  to  meet  them — it  is 
as  yet  in  its  infancy,  and  has  no  body  of  doctrine 
to  substitute  for  what  it  displaces,  A  positivist 
would  answer  to  this,  that  conscious  ignorance  is 
better  than  chimerical  fancies,  which  not  only  them- 
selves mislead,  but  prevent  the  growth  of  true 
doctrine ;  that  we  are  possessed  of  empirical  laws  as 
to  physical  life,  individual  conduct,  and  social  organ- 
ization, by  which  to  direct  experiments  and  guide 
practice  with  more  or  less  approximation  to  truth; 
and  that,  scientific  conceptions  and  scientific  methods 
once  instituted,  a  body  of  doctrine  will  accumulate 
with  a  rapidly  accelerating  ratio.  A  more  funda- 
mental objection  is,  that  after  leaving  physiology,  we 
get  into  a  region  of  phenomena  where  Will  plays  a 
leading  part,  and,  quite  apart  from  all  consideration 
of  theistic  interference,  introduces  a  disturbing  element 
that  baffles  the  previsions  of  science  by  destroying 
the  uniformity  in  the  connexion  of  the  phenomena 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  PRILOSOPET.  325 

of  conduct.  Whatever  theory,  however,  be  held 
about  the  human  will,  whatever  phrases  be  preferred 
to  express  our  consciousness  of  its  mode  of  operation, 
it  is  undeniable  that  an  act  of  determination  is  uni- 
formly preceded  by  a  predominant  desire  in  con- 
formity with  that  act.  The  question  therefore  really 
is,  can  the  succession  of  om*  desires  be  reduced  to 
uniform  laws  ?  Given  the  character  and  the  circum- 
stances of  a  man,  is  it  possible  to  determine  what 
desires  will  direct  his  action  ?  The  popular,  or  rather 
the  metaphysical  voice,  denies  this  possibility;  but, 
we  think,  more  in  the  interest  of  certain  other  theories 
— such  for  instance  as  human  responsibility — than 
because  facts  compel  this  denial.  For  if  this  de- 
termination of  human  actions  be  really  impossible 
under  the  assumed  conditions, — in  other  words,  if 
human  actions  are  capricious  and  arbitrary  in  any 
other  sense  than  arises  from  the  complexity  and  in- 
calculable nature  of  the  motives  which  determine 
them, — what  is  the  meaning  of  education,  of  moral 
and  social  influences,  of  any  legislation  but  what  is 
penal,  or  indeed  even  of  penal  legislation  ?  Plainly, 
all  these  agencies  rest  for  their  validity  upon  the 
commonly-believed  fact  that  motives  influence  con- 
duct; that  one  train  of  motives  ever  acting  upon  a 
human  being  of  given  tendencies  induces   conduct 


326  :essats. 

different  from  another  train  of  motives.  Religion 
itself,  what  is  it  but  a  fresh  and  higher  presentation 
of  motives — truths  revealed  to  influence  human  con- 
duct, which  other  known  truths  are  not  capable  of 
influencing  in  the  same  direction  to  the  same  degree  ? 
It  is  true  that  nothing  appears  at  first  sight  more 
variable,  more  capricious,  less  subject  to  any  uni- 
formities of  sequence,  than  the  phenomena  of  human 
conduct:  but  then,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the 
determining  conditions  of  human  conduct  are  in- 
finitely various  and  complex.  For  this  reason,  Mr. 
Mill  has  carefully  guarded  against  the  extravagant 
supposition  that  the  future  acts  of  men  and  of  societies 
can,  in  the  highest  possibilities  of  social  science, 
be  foreseen  like  the  phenomena  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  ;  and  has  limited  the  utmost  attainment  of 
that  science  to  determine  that  given  circumstances 
have  a  tendency  to  alter  given  characters  in  ascer- 
tainable degrees  and  directions,  or  that  under  given 
circumstances  given  characters  will  act  in  a  deter- 
minate manner.  Nor  has  M.  Comte  carried  his 
speculations  to  a  more  extravagant  pitch  than 
this ;  which  seems,  after  all  said,  to  be  nothing 
more  than  the  enunciation  with  scientific  precision 
of  a  belief  we  all  act  upon  every  day  of  our  lives, 
and  on  which  most  of  the  institutions  of  society — 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  FSIZOSOFSY.  327 

t.  e.  all  which  have  a  moral  or  educational  aim — are 
founded. 

Putting  aside,  then,  these  two  objections,  which 
lie,  the  one  against  the  present  claims,  the  other 
against  the  possibility,  of  social  science, — and  sup- 
posing such  a  science  not  only  to  the  extent  indi- 
cated possible,  not  only  constituted  in  conception  and 
method,  but  so  far  constructed  as  that  the  tendencies 
of  men  and  of  societies  under  given  circumstances 
shall  be  rigorously  demonstrated, —  our  inquiry  is, 
whether  such  knowledge  is  adequate  to  supply  the 
forces  necessary  to  maintain  individuals  and  societies 
in  a  right  course  of  conduct.  We  assume  the  con- 
ditions known  under  which  the  human  being  may 
be  trained  to  any  given  line  of  conduct;  but  how 
do  we  determine  the  line  of  conduct  to  be  enforced 
on  men  and  on  societies  ?  The  phenomena  of  human 
action  being,  in  virtue  of  their  complexity,  eminently 
modifiable,  have  we  firom  positivism  any  principle 
on  which  to  found  our  modifying  interference,  any 
end  by  which  to  shape  our  education,  our  social  or- 
ganization, our  legislation  ?  Comte  bases  on  the  past 
history  of  human  evolution  a  brilliant  generalization 
of  the  phases  of  speculative  opinion  through  which 
mankind  has  passed  or  must  pass,  and  indicates  the 
coexistent  social  and  political  phenomena  which  be- 


328  HSSAT8. 

long  to  each  phase.  In  every  department  of  specu- 
lation that  has  run  its  course,  mankind  has  passed 
through  three  stages,  or  modes  of  viewing  the  phe- 
nomena whose  explanation  is  sought, — the  theologic, 
in  which  all  action  in  the  world  is  referred  to  a 
volition  in  or  above  the  objects  moved;  the  meta- 
physic,  in  which  the  action  is  referred  to  mysterious 
entities  supposed  to  reside  in  objects  moving,  and 
which  are  in  fact  nothing  but  abstract  conceptions 
of  the  phenomena  themselves ;  and  finally  the  positive, 
in  which  no  explanation  is  sought  beyond  the  classi- 
fication of  the  phenomenon  along  with  similar  phe- 
nomena, and  the  ascertainment  of  its  precedent  con- 
ditions. This  bare  statement  can  give  not  the  faintest 
conception  of  the  value  of  the  generalization — if  only 
estimated  as  an  hypothetical  approximation  to  a  true 
law — in  studying  universal  history.  But  M.  Comte 
authoritatively  lays  it  down  as  demonstrated  to  be 
the  leading  law  of  human  evolution,  since  all  other 
social  phenomena  follow  its  phases.  If  we  are  not 
satisfied  with  his  proofs, — if  we  object  that  the  first 
links  in  the  chain  of  evidence  are  altogether  wanting, 
and  that  the  hypothesis  is  based  upon  no  exhaustive 
analysis  even  of  the  facts  which  history  has  recorded, 
— ^we  are  cavalierly  informed  that  social  science  re- 
quires the  establishment  of  such  a  law,  and  estab- 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  PEILOSOFHY.  329 

lished  therefore  it  is  and  shall  be.  This  law  of 
evolution  being  then  established  to  M.  Comte's  satis- 
faction, and  for  the  sake  of  argument  to  ours  also, 
how  does  it  supply  the  guiding  principle  we  are 
in  quest  of  to  regulate  the  future  course  of  that 
evolution,  so  far  as  our  modifying  power  may  ex- 
tend? Here  M.  Comte  becomes  altogether  obscure 
and  contradictory.  It  seems  sufficient  to  him  to 
know  the  law  of  the  phases  through  which  belief  has 
passed  in  reference  to  certain  departments  of  science, 
and  is,  in  his  opinion,  to  pass  in  all  branches  of  know- 
ledge and  speculation.  The  other  social  phenomena 
being  dependent  on  or  at  least  following  the  changes 
of  speculative  opinion,  their  law  is  known  too.  But 
we  are  as  far  off  as  ever  from  any  guide  for  indi- 
vidual conduct,  or  for  the  action  of  society.  It  may 
be  that  M.  Comte  thinks  it  superfluous,  having  in- 
dicated a  law  of  human  progression,  to  do  more  than 
hint  that  we  are  to  obey  it,  and  become  positive  as 
quickly  as  we  may;  and  that  this  once  in  course  of 
accomplishment,  the  social  movement  will  proceed 
harmoniously  in  its  normal  course,  bringing  felicity 
the  highest  attainable  to  individuals  and  to  societies. 
But  even  this  very  vague  injunction,  to  make  posi- 
tivism our  aim  and  guiding  principle  of  conduct,  has 
after  all  not  even  the  slight  practical  bearing  which 


330  ASSAYS. 

at  first  sight  it  seems  to  have.  For  we  are  over  and 
over  again  assured  "by  M.  Comte,  that  the  general 
course  of  human  evolution  is  beyond  human  control ; 
that  only  secondary  modifications  as  to  speed  and 
minor  indirect  influences  of  the  main  movement  are 
within  our  power.  Indeed,  the  whole  course  of  his 
demonstration  from  history  shows  this,  inasmuch  as 
the  evolution  has  proceeded  into  the  third  and  final 
stage  not  only  without  conscious  efibrt  of  men  so 
to  direct  it,  but  against  their  continuous  effort  to 
thwart  it  and  turn  it  to  another  direction.  If,  then, 
only  secondary  modifications  and  indirect  fluctuations 
and  regurgitations  of  the  main  current  are  within 
our  influence  to  control  and  regulate,  of  what  possible 
use  can  it  be  to  inform  us  only  of  the  main  law  of 
evolution,  with  whose  course  we  have  nothing  to  do  but 
to  acknowledge  it  and  submit  to  it?  It  is  just  of  the 
things  that  are  within  our  power  that  we  have  need  to 
know,  in  order  to  regulate  our  conduct.  A  man  wish- 
ing to  build  a  house  must  indeed  obey  the  law  of  uni- 
versal gravitation,  but  it  will  help  him  little  practically 
to  have  that  law  enunciated  with  the  most  convincing 
pomp  of  historical  proof  and  the  most  rigid  mathe- 
matical precision.  We  are  obliged  to  conclude,  then, 
that  positivism  in  M.  Comte's  hands,  while  pretending 
to  take  upon  itself  the  regulation  of  human  conduct, 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  PEILOSOPET.  331 

fails  to  furnish  a  guiding  principle  for  either  indi- 
viduals or  societies.  It  sends  us  to  sea  with  an 
admirable  chart  of  the  tides,  currents,  and  winds; 
instructs  us  how  eminently  modifiable  these  forces 
are  by  the  rudder;  but  declines  to  provide  us  with 
a  compass,  or  to  say  anything  about  the  port  for 
which  we  have  to  steer.  All  that  can  be  done  in 
such  a  case  is  to  lie  on  one's  back  and  look  at  the 
stars,  or  exercise  an  empirical  prudence  in  selecting 
such  a  course  as  fancy  or  foresight  may  suggest.  To 
drop  metaphor,  we  must  still  have  recourse  to  our 
celestial  guides,  or  to  our  internal  monitions,  in  our 
voyage  along  the  stormy  sea  of  life ;  for  M.  Comte 
provides  us  with  no  satisfactory  substitute. 

But  morality  implies  not  only  a  fixed  aim,  a 
principle  of  action  to  maintain  steadiness  amid  the 
conflicts  of  contending  motives;  it  equally  demands 
ruling  influences  that  are  adequate  to  maintain 
obedience  to  the  principle  of  action,  persistence  to- 
wards the  aim.  Suppose,  then,  society  constituted 
on  a  positive  basis,  its  principle  of  existence  undis- 
puted, what  motives  could  the  system  present  to  the 
members  of  society,  young  and  old,  to  compel 
obedience  to  its  regulations?  of  what  forces  would 
its  moral  police  find  themselves  possessed?  They 
would  have  the  advantage  to  begin  with  of  a  uniform 


332  ASSAYS. 

state  of  belief,  moulding  all  social  influences  and 
institutions,  and  so  hj  its  indirect  as  well  as  direct 
effects  tending  to  check  that  intellectual  discord  and 
uncertainty  from  which  so  much  of  our  social  and 
individual  weakness  proceeds ;  an  enormous  force,  not 
to  be  easily  overestimated — liable,  however,  we  must 
remember,  to  be  rudely  broken  in  upon  by  specu- 
lations of  a  contrary  character,  so  long  as  any  field 
remained  open  for  such  speculations :  and  to  the 
young  citizens  of  the  Positive  society  the  Unknown 
would  still  remain  open,  and  dreams  and  reminis- 
cences could  scarcely  fail  to  float  in  from  that  region, 
and  fall  as  fruitful  seeds  on  spirits  impatient,  as 
experience  tells  us  human  spirits  ever  will  be,  of  the 
limitations  of  certain  knowledge.  So  that  even  for 
positivism  there  is  no  guarantee  against  the  inroads 
of  metaphysics  and  mysticism.  But,  be  that  worth 
what  it  may  as  an  argument,  the  direct  moral  force 
of  positive  teaching  would  lie  in  the  demonstration 
of  the  issues  of  conduct  on  society  at  large  and  on 
the  individuals  acting — in  the  strength  and  vivacity 
of  the  personal  and  general  affections  j  of  course, 
rewards  and  punishments  might  be  as  effectual  as 
with  us  at  present.  In  fact,  with  the  exception 
indicated  above,  and  that  only  amounts  to  difference 
of  degree,  the  motives  of  positivism  are  all  in  force 


COMTE'S  POSITIVE  FHILOSOPET.  333 

now;  and  added  to  them  are  all  those  sentiments, 
hopes,  and  fears,  that  spring  from  a  belief  in  God 
and  a  confidence  of  life  beyond  the  grave.  We  can 
speak  of  self-interest,  of  love  of  country,  of  attach- 
ment to  friends  and  relations,  of  the  closer  ties  of 
family  and  love  between  man  and  woman,  of  the 
charms  of  knowledge,  of  the  influences  of  art,  of  the 
sympathies  inspired  by  generous  actions,  as  well  as 
the  positivist.  But  we  can  speak  too  of  a  personal 
Being  of  infinite  love,  purity,  and  power,  to  whom 
we  are  responsible,  and  who  we  are  taught  to  believe 
watches  our  course  with  a  tender  interest,  for  which 
no  name  is  sufiiciently  expressive  but  those  which 
denote  the  dearest  earthly  relationships.  We  can 
speak  too  of  a  life  hereafter,  and  are  taught  to  believe 
that  the  formation  of  character  is  of  infinite  importance 
compared  with  all  other  issues  of  conduct,  because 
character  is  eternal,  and  what  is  done  and  thought 
here  bears  fruit  of  weal  or  wo  beyond  the  limits  of 
time.  Even  these  mighty  moral  forces  are  con- 
tinually found  insufficient  to  keep  us  up  to  our 
imperfect  sense  of  duty,  to  make  us  ever  regard  that 
highest  social  law  which  says  ''  Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbour  as  thyself."  What,  then,  has  positivism 
to  oficr  as  a  corrective  to  selfish  passions  and  short- 
sighted lust  of  present  gratification,  that  can  do  in 


334  'ussATS. 

the  place  of  these?  We  assumed  vastly  too  much 
when  we  conceded  to  this  system  that  the  affections 
will  flourish  with  the  same  vigour  if  the  belief  of 
man's  immortality  is  destroyed ;  yet  these,  again,  are 
among  our  strongest  purifying  influences — strongest 
to  refine,  strongest  to  free  from  selfishness.  So  it 
appears  that  this  system  not  only  fails  to  provide  an 
aim  for  the  action  of  man  and  of  society,  but  if  an 
aim  were  conceded  to  it,  has  no  moral  force  to  keep 
men  steady,  no  counteracting  power  to  the  notorious 
selfishness  and  sensuality  against  which  we  have  to 
be  ever  on  our  guard. 

But  if  all  else  prospered  with  the  positive  philo- 
sophy— if  demonstration  compelled  us  to  admit  its 
law  of  historical  evolution — if  it  provided  aims  and 
motives  to  individual  or  social  conduct — there  remains 
one  objection  fatal,  in  our  opinion,  to  its  pre- 
sumptions. It  professes  the  power  to  elevate  human 
life  to  heights  of  felicity  and  knowledge  of  which  we 
as  yet  only  dream — that  it  will  bring  round  the 
golden  year  for  which  poets  have  tuned  their  most 
stirring  songs  and  prophets  yearned  upon  their  watch- 
towers  :  and  could  it  perform  all  its  votaries  promise, 
what  would  be  the  inevitable  result  ?  Undoubtedly 
that,  the  lovelier  and  the  richer  life  grew — the  higher 
in  dignity,  the  firmer  in  purpose,  the  fuller  of  grand 


COMTH'S  POSITIVE  PHILOSOFHY.  335 

results — the  fiercer  would  rise  the  longing  for  im- 
mortality; the  more  would  the  men  and  women  of 
the  "crowning  race"  shrink  back  appalled  with 
horror  from  the  thought  of  personal  annihilation. 
By  this  contradiction  the  scheme  stands  condemned 
in  the  moral  judgment.  Probably,  were  it  to  become 
the  creed  of  the  world,  it  would  be  condemned  not 
by  such  contradiction,  but  by  belying  the  promises 
of  its  author,  and  by  degrading  and  sensualizing 
human  life  till  man  would  care  as  little  about  death 
as  a  dog  does,  or  rather  seek  it  as  soon  as  his  sensual 
faculties  were  so  impaired  that  life  yielded  less 
physical  pleasure  than  pain.  If  a  practical  test  of 
the  positive  creed  be  wanted,  there  is  one  ready  at 
hand.  Let  any  one  follow  to  the  grave  the  wife,  the 
child,  the  parent  he  has  loved  and  lost,  and  seek  to 
comfort  himself  by  the  reflection  that  the  loved  one 
is  absorbed  in  the  grand  ttre — in  the  totality  of  or- 
ganized life  existing  through  all  time  in  the  universe. 
No !  whatever  speculative  difficulties  may  beset  and 
bewilder  us  when  intellect  is  busy,  and  feeling  and 
action  suspended  for  a  while,  we  shall  all  be  glad, 
when  bereavement  and  sorrow  cast  their  shadows 
over  our  path,  to  take  refuge  in  the  faith  of  our  child- 
hood ;  and  the  words  of  our  burial-service,  "  Blessed 
are  the  dead  that  die  in  the  Lord,"  will  fall  upon 


336  JESS  AYS. 

the  ear  with  an  assurance  all  the  more  sure  from  the 
douhts  with  which  we  have  struggled,  and  the  clouds 
of  speculation  that  have  hid  the  great  moral  verities 
for  a  time  from  our  overstrained  eyes. 


The  Spectator, 

February/  ii,  1854. 


THE   END. 


J.    PALMEB,   PBi;«T£R,   SIDNEY  STHEET,   CAKBUniOE. 


CTambi'iQge. 


SELECT  LIST  OF 


%t^  Wiaxk  nun  Mt^  €)iiim&, 


C?) 


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MASSON'S  LIFE  OF  MILTON— continued. 

uufit,  in  the  instance  of  such  a  Life,  to  allow  the  forms  of  Biography  to  over- 
flow, to  some  extent,  into  those  of  History.  In  other  words,  it  is  intended 
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may,  obviously  enough,  be  taken  as  the  representative  of  its  literary 
efforts  and  capabilities ;  and  the  general  history  of  its  literature  may, 
therefore,  in  a  certain  manner,  be  narrated  in  connexion  with  his  life.  But 
even  in  the  political  and  ecclesiastical  departments  Milton  was  not  one 
standing  aloof.  He  was  not  the  man  of  action  of  the  party  with  which  he 
was  associated,  and  the  actual  and  achieved  deeds  of  that  party,  whether  in 
war  or  in  council,  are  not  the  property  of  his  life;  but  he  was,  as  nearly  as 
any  private  man  in  his  time,  the  thinker  and  idealist  of  the  party — now 
the  expositor  and  champion  of  their  views,  now  their  instructor  and  in 
advance  of  them, — and  hence,  without  encroaching  too  much  on  known  and 
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his  minor  poems;  the  second,  extending  from  1640  to  1660,  or  from  the 
beginning  of  the  Civil  Wars  to  the  Restoration,  and  forming  the  middle 
period  of  his  polemical  activity  as  a  prose-writer;  and  the  third  extending 
from  1660  to  1674,  which  was  the  period  of  his  later  muse  and  of  the  publi- 
cation of  '  Paradise  Lost.'  It  is  proposed  to  devote  a  volume  to  each  of 
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Critic 

"As  a  means  to  teach  the  great  truth  tliat  we  are  'fearfully  and  wonderfully 
made,'  this  essay  will  be  of  great  value." 

Examiner. 

"  An  extremely  pleasant  little  book.  .  .  .  entertaining  and  instructive ;  and  may 
be  welcomed  in  many  a  home." 

Leader. 

"  Dr.  Wilson  unites  poetic  with  scientific  faculty,  and  this  union  gives  a  charm 
to  all  he  writes.  In  tlie  little  volume  before  us  he  has  described  the  five  senses  in 
language  so  popular  that  a  child  may  comprehend  the  meaning,  so  suggestive  that 
l)hi)osoTihers  will  read  it  with  ,  leasure." 

Literary  Spectator. 

"  Besides  the  merit  of  being  deeply  interesting,  it  can  also  lay  claim  to  the  higher 
functions  of  a  useful  instructor;  and  in  its  twofold  capacity  it  has  our  unqualified 
approval." 

Scottish  Press. 

"  Every  page  presents  us  with  something  worthy  of  being  thought  about ;  every 
one  is  bright  with  the  full  clear  light  of  the  writer's  mind,  and  with  his  genial 
humour." 


NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 


THE  WORKS  OF 

WILLIAM     ARCHER     BUTLER,     M.A. 

Late  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Dublin. 

FIVE  VOLUMES  8ro.  UNIFORMLY  PRINTED  AND  BOUND. 

"  A  man  of  glowhig  genius  and,  diversified  accomplishments,  whose  remains  fill 
these  five  brilliant  volumes." — Edinburgh  Review. 

SOLD    SEPARATELY   AS   FOLLOWS. 

1.  Sermons,  Doctrinal    and    Practical.     First   Series. 

Edited  by  the  Very  Rev.  T.  Woodward,  M.A.  Dean  of  Down, 
with  a  Memoir  and  Portrait.     Fourth  Edition.     8vo.  cloth,  12«. 

"  Present  a  richer  combination  of  the  qualities  for  Sermons  of  the  first  class  than 
any  we  have  met  with  in  any  living  writer." — British  Quarterly. 

2.  Sermons,  Doctrinal  and  Practical.     Second  Series. 

Edited  from  the  Autlior's  MSS.,  by  J.  A.  Jeremie,  D.D.,  Regius 
Professor  of  Divinity  in  the  University  of  Cambridge.  Second 
Edition.  8vo.  cloth,  IQs.  &d. 

"  They  are  marked  by  the  same  originality  and  vigour  of  expression,  the  same 
richness  of  imagery  and  illustration,  the  same  large  views  and  catholic  spirit,  and 
the  same  depth  and  fervotir  of  devotional  feeling,  which  so  remarkably  distin- 
guished the  preceding  Series  and  which  rendered  it  a  most  valuable  accession  to 
our  theological  literature'' — from  Dr.  Jeremie's  Prf.face. 

3.  Letters  on  Romanism.      A  Reply  to  Dr.  Newman's  Essay, 

on  Development.  Edited  by  the  Very  Rev.  T.  Woodward,  M.A. 
Dean  of  Down.  8vo.  cloth,  10*.  M. 

"  Deserve  to  be  considered  the  most  remarhahle  proofs  of  the  Author's  indomi- 
table energy  and  power  of  concenlralionV — ^Edinburgh  Review. 

4.  Lectures   on  the  History  of  Ancient  Philosophy. 

Edited  from  the  Author's  MSS.,  with  Notes,  by  William 
Hepworth  Thompson,  M.A.,  Regius  Professor  of  Greek  in  the 
University  of  Cambridge.  2  vols.  8vo.,  £1  5«. 

"  Of  the  dialectic  and  physics  of  Plato  they  are  the  only  exposition  at  once  full, 
accurate, and  popular,  with  which  I  am  acquainted :  being  far  more  acmrate  than 
the  French,  and  incompa^bly  more  popular  than  the  German  treatises  on  these 
departments  of  the  Platonic  philosophy,'" — From  Proe.  TuoiiPso^'s  Preface. 


PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  » 

LECTURES  TO  LADIES  ON  PRACTICAL  SUBJECTS. 

Third  Edition,  revised.  Crown  8vo.  clotli,  7s.  M. 

By  Reverends  F.  D.  Maurice,  Charles  Kingsley,  J.  Ll.  Davies, 
Archdeacon  Allen,  Dean  Trench,  Professor  Brewer,  Dr. 
George  Johnson,  Dr.  Sieveking,  Dr.  Chambers,  F.  J.  Stephen, 
Esq.,  and  Tom  Taylor,  Esq. 

Contents  : — Plan  of  Female  Colleges — The  College  and  the  Hospital 
— The  Country  Parish — Over  Work  and  Anxiety — Dispensaries — • 
District  Visiting — Influence  of  Occupation  on  Health — Law  as  it 
affects  the  Poor— Everyday  Work  of  Ladies — Teaching  by  Words 
— Sanitary  Law — Workhouse  Visiting. 

"  These  men,  themselves  an  honour  to  their  times,  do  honour  to  woman  hy  giving 
her  the  lenejil  of  the  best  thoughts  of  manly  minds." — ^Edinburgh  Review. 


BY  THE  RIGHT  REV.  JOHN  WILLIAM  COLENSO,  D.D., 

Lord  Bishop  of  Natal,  formerly  Fellow  of  St.  John't  College,  Cambridge. 

1 .  The  Colony  of  Natal.      A  Journal  of  Ten  Weeks'  Tonr  of 

Visitation  among  tlie  Colonists  and  Zulu  KaflBrs  of  Natal.  With 
four  Lithographs  and  a  Map.  Tcap.  8vo.  cloth,  5*. 

"J  most  interesting  and  charmingly  written  HttU  hook" — ^Examiner. 
"  The  Church  has  good  reason  to  be  grateful  for  the  publication." 

Colonial  Church  Chronicle. 

2.  Village  Sermons.      Second  Edition,    reap.  8vo.  cloth,  2s.  6<^. 

3.  Companion  to  the  Holy  Communion.     Tlie  Service, 

with  Select  Readings  from  the  Writings  of  Mr.  MAURICE. 
Fine  Edition,  rubricated  and  bound  in  morocco  antique,  gilt 
edges,  6s. ;  or  in  cloth,  red  edges,  2*.  6«?. ;  common  paper,  limp 
cloth,  1*. 


BY  CHARLES  ANTHONY  SWAINSON,  M.A., 

Principal  of  the  Theological  College,  and  Prebendary  of  Cbichesler. 

The  Creeds  of  The  Church.  In  their  Relations  to  the 
Word  of  God  and  to  the  Conscience  of  the  Christian.  Being 
the  Hulsean  Lectures  for  1857.     8vo.  cloth,  9*. 


Tfi  NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 

.=^IOrfi  BY  JULIUS   CHARLES   HARE,  M.A., 

Somelime  Archdeacon  of  Lewes,  Rector  of  Ilerst/nonceux,  Chaplain  in  Ordinary  lo  the 
Queen,  and  formerly  Fellow  and  Tutor  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 

NINE  VOLS.  8vo.  UNIFORMLY  PRINTED  ANB  BOUND. 

1 .  Charges    to   the  Clergy  of  the  Archdeaconry  of 

Lewes.  Delivered  at  the  Ordinary  Visitations  during  tlie  years 
1840  to  ]854;j  witli  Notes  on  the  Principal  Events  affecting  the 
Church  during  that  period.  And  an  Introduction,  explanatory  of 
his  position  in  the  Church,  with  reference  to  the  Parties  which 
divide  it.  3  vols.  Svo.  cloth,  £1  Us.  Qd. 

2.  Miscellaneous  Pamphlets  on  some  of  the  Leading 

Questions  agitated  in  the  Church  during  the  years  1845  to  1851. 

Svo.  cloth,  lis. 

3.  Vindication  of  Luther  against  his  recent  English 

Assailants.     Second  Edition.  8vo.  cloth,  7s, 

4.  The  Mission  of  the  Comforter.     With  Notes.    Second 

Edition.  Svo.  cloth,  12*. 

5.  The  Victory  of  Faith.     Second  Edition.  Svo.  cloth,  5.'. 

6.  Parish  Sermons.      Second  Series.  Svo.  cloth,  12*. 

7.  Sermons  preacht  on  Particular  Occasions.     Svo.  12*. 

'       The  two  following  boohs  are  included  among  the  collected  Charges,  but  are  published 
separately  for  the  sake  of  purchasers  of  the  rest. 

8.  Charges  to   the   Clergy  of  the  Archdeaconry  of 

Lewes.  Delivered  in  the  years  1843,  1845,  1846.  Never 
before  published.  With  an  Introduction,  explanatory  of  his 
position  in  the  Church,  with  reference  to  the  Parties  tiiat  divide 
it.  Svo.  cloth,  6*.  Qd. 

9.  The     Contest   with   Rome.      A  Charge,  delivered  in  1851. 

Witli  Notes,  especially  in  answer  to  Dr.  Newman  on  the  Position 
of  Catholics  in  England.     Second  Edition.       Svo.  cloth,  10*.  6(/. 


PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  11 

BY  JOHN  McLEOO  CAMPBELL, 

Formerly  Minister  of  Row. 

The  Nature  of  the  Atonement,  and  its  Relation  to 

Remission  of  Sins  and  Eternal  Life.  8vo.  cloth,  10«.  6rf. 

"  This  is  a  remarkable  boolc,  as  indicating  the  mode  in  which  a  devout  and  intel- 
lectual mind  has  found  its  way,  almost  vnassisted,  out  of  the  extreme  LntheruH 
and  Cahintstic  vietcs  of  the  Atonement  into  a  healthier  atmosphere  of  doctrine. 
. .  .  We  cannot  assent  to  all  the  positions  laid  down  by  this  writer,  but  he  is 
entitled  to  be  spoken  respectfully  of,  both  because  of  his  evident  earnestness  and 
reality,  and  the  tender  mode  in  which  he  deals  with  the  opinions  of  others  from 
whom,  he  feels  compelled  to  differr — Literary  Churchman. 

"  Deserves  wide  celebrity" — Christian  Times. 

BY  G.  E.  LYNCH  COTTON,  M.A., 

Master  of  Marlborough  College,  Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Lord  Bishop  of  London, 
formerly  Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 

Sermons  :    Chiefly  connected  with  Public  Events  in  1851'. 

Fcap.  8vo.  cloth,  3j. 

"  A  volume  of  which  we  can  speak  with  high  admiration" 

Christian  Remembrakcer. 

BY  JOHN  HAMILTON,  Esq.  (of  St.  Ernan's,)  M.A. 

St.  John's  College,  Cambridge. 

On  Truth  and  Error :  Tlioughts,  in  Prose  and  Verse, 

on  tlie  Principles  of  Truth,  and  the  Causes  and  Effects  of  Error. 
Crown  8vo.  bound  in  cloth,  with  red  leaves,  lO*.  Qd. 

"A  very  genuine,  thoughtful,  and  interesting  booJr,  the  work  of  a  man  of  honest 
mind  and  pure  heart ;  one  who  has  felt  the  pressure  of  religiovs  difficulties, 
who  has  thought  for  himself  on  the  matters  of  which  he  doubted,  and  tcho  has 
patiently  and  piously  worked  his  way  to  conclusions  which  he  now  reverently  but 
fearlessly  utters  to  the  world." — Nonconformist. 

BY  ISAAC  TAYLOR,  ESQ., 

Author  of  "  The  Natural  History  of  Enthusiasm." 

IMie     Restoration     of     Belief. 

Crown  8vo.  cloth,  8*.  6d. 

"A  volume  which  contains  logical  sagacity,  and  philosophic  comprehension,  as  well 
as  the  magnanimity  and  courage  of  faith,  in  richer  profusion  than  any  other 
work  bearing  on  religions  matters  that  has  been  addressed  to  this  generation . 
'  The  Restoration  of  Belief^  may,  in  many  respects,  take  a  place  among  the 
books  of  the  nineteenth  century,  corresponding  to  thai  justly  conceded  by  us 
to  the  '  Analogy^  of  Butler  in  the  literature  of  the  last  age,  or  to  the  '  Thoughts 
of  Pascal  in  that  of  the  age  preceding ." — NoRTH  British  Review. 

"A  book  which  I  would  recommend  to  every  student."  —  Eev.  Prf.BENDaRT 
SwAiNSON,  Principal  of  Chichester  Theological  College. 


12  NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 


BY  CHARLES  KINGSLEY,  F.S.A. 

Rector  of  Eversley,  and  Canon  of  Middleham. 

1 .  Two  Years  Ago.      Second  Edition. 

3  vols,  crown  8vo.  clotli,  £1  11«.  66?. 
"  Much  the  best  book  Mr.  Kingdey  has  written." — Saturday  Review. 

2.  The  Heroes :   Greek  Fairy  Tales  for  my  Children. 

Witli  Eight  Illustrations  drawn  on  wood  by  the  Author.  Beauti- 
fully printed  on  tinted  paper  and  elegantly  bound  in  cloth,  with 
gilt  leaves,  7s.  &d. 

"  The  fascination  of  a  fairytale  is  given  to  each  legend." — Examiner. 

"  Rarely  hare  those  heroes  of  Greelc  tradition  been  celebraied  in  a  bolder  or  more 
stirring  strain" — Saturday  Review, 

3.  "  Westward   Ho !"   or  the  Voyages  and  Adven- 

tures of  Sir  Amyas  Leigh,  Knight,  of  Borrough,  in  the  County 
of  Devon,  in  the  reign  of  Her  most  Glorious  Majesty  Queen 
Elizabeth.     Third  Edition.  Crown  8vo.  cloth,  7«.  M. 

"Mr.  Kingsley  has  selected  a  good  subject,  and  has  written  a  good  novel  to 

excellent  purpose." — The  Times. 
"  Noble  and  well-timed." — Spectator, 

4.  Glaucus ;  or,  the  Wonders  of  the  Shore.     A  Com- 

panion for  the  Sea-side.    Tliird  Edition.    Ecap.  8vo.  beautifully 
bound  in  cloth,  with  gilt  leaves,  3*.  6a?. 
"  Its  pages  sparkle  with  life,  they  open  vp  a  thousand  sources  of  unanticipated 
pleasure,  and  combine  amuse'netit  with  instruction,  in  a  very  happy  and  unwonted 
degree." — Eclectic  Review. 

5.  Phaethon  ;  or,  Loose  Thoughts  for  Loose  Thinkers. 

Second  Edition.  Crown  Svo.  boards,  2«. 

"  Its  suggestions  may  meet  halfway  many  a  latent  doubt,  and,  like  a  light  breeze, 
lift  from  th^  soul  clouds  that  are  gathering  heavily,  and  threatening  to  settle 
down  in  wintry  gloom  on  the  summer  of  many  a  fair  and  promising  young  life." 
— Sfectator. 

6.  Alexandria  and  Her  Schools.  Being  Four  Lectures  delivered 

at  the  Philosophical  Institution,  Edinburgh.     With  a   Preface. 

Crown  Svo.  cloth,  5s. 

"  A  series  of  brilliant  biographical  and  literary  sketches,  interspersed  with  com- 
ments of  the  closest  modern,  or  rather  universal  application." — Spectator. 


PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  13 

BY  THE  RIGHT  REV.  GEORGE  AUGUSTUS  SELWYN,  D.D., 

Lord  Bishop  of  New  Zealand,  formerly  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge. 

The  Work  of  Christ  in  the  World.  Sermons  Preached 
before  the  University  of  Cambridge.  Tiiird  Edition.  Published 
for  the  benefit  of  the  New  Zealand  Church  Pund. 

Crown  8vo.  2s. 

BY   CHARLES   HARDWICK,   M.A. 

Christian  Advocate  in  the  University  of  Cambridge, 

Christ  and  other  Masters  :  A  Historical  Inquiry  into 

some  of  the  chief  Parallelisms  and  Contrasts  between  Christianity 
and  the  Religious  Systems  of  the  Ancient  World ;  with  special 
reference  to  prevailing  Difficulties  and  Objections.  Part  I.  Intro- 
duction.    Part  II.  Religions  of  India. 

Part  III.  Religions  of  China,  America,  and  Oceanica. 

In  8vo.  cloth.  Is.  dd.  each. 

BY  CHARLES  MANSFIELD,  M.A. 
1.  Letters    from   Paraguay,    Brazil,  and   the    Plate. 

By  the  late  Chaiiles  Mansfield,  M.  A.,  Clare  College,  Cambridge. 
With  a  life  by  Chakles  Kingsley,  Rector  of  Eversley.  Post  8vo. 
With  a  Map,  and  a  Portrait,  and  numerous  Woodcuts.     12*.  6d. 

"  An  inferesHng  and  instructive  volume." — Morning  Post. 
"  A  delightfully  written  book." — British  Quarterly. 


BY  THE  RIGHT  REV.  MATTHEW  HALE,  D.D. 

Lord  Bishop  of  Perth. 

The    Transportation    Question ;    or.   Why    Western 

Australia  should  be  made  a  Reformatory  Colony  instead  of  a 
Penal  Settlement.  Crown  Svo.  sewed,  2«.  (Sd. 


14  NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 

BY  D.  J.  VAUGHAN,  M.A, 

Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  Incumbent  of  St.  Mark's,  Wiilechapel,  London. 

Sermons  Preached   in   St.  John's  Church,  Leicester, 

during  the  Years  1855  and  1856.  Crown  Svo.  cloth,  5*.  6c/. 

BY  THOMAS  RAWSON   BIRKS,   M.A., 

RECTOR  OP   KELSIIALL,    EXAMINING    CHAPLAIN   TO   THE    LORD    BISHOP   OP   CARLISLE. 

Author  of"  The  Life  of  the  Rev.  E.  Bickerateth." 

The   Difficulties   of   Behef,'  in   connexion   with   tlie 
Creation  and  the  Fall.  Crown  8vo.  cloth,  4«.  6^?. 

"  Wifhoid  binding  ourselves  to  the  immediate  accepiance  of  ihis  interesting 
volume,  Ke  may  yet  express  our  hearty  approbation  of  its  tone." 

Christian  Remembrancer. 

"Aprofound  and  masterly  essay" — Eclectic. 

"  His  argnments  are  original,  and  carefully  and  logically  elahorafed.  We  may 
add  tliat  tliey  are  distinguished  by  a  marked  sobriety  and  reverence  for  the  Word 
of  God." — E.ECORD. 

"  Of  sterling  value." — London  Quarteelt. 


BY  THE  HON.  HENRY  E.  J.  HOWARD,  D.D., 

Dean  of  Lichfield. 

The    Pentateuch,    or    the    Five    Books    of   Moses. 

Translated  into  English  from  the  Version  of  tlie  LXX.  With 
Notes  on  its  Omissions  and  Insertions,  and  also  on  the  Passages 
in  which  it  differs  from  the  Authorised  Version. 

3  vols,  crown  Svo.  cloth.     Sold  separately,  as  follows : — 

Genesis:  1  vol.  8s.  M.    Exodus  and  Leviticus.  1  vol.  lo*.  &d. 
Numbers  and  Deuteronomy.    1  vol.  lO*.  Qd. 

"  The  Work  deserves  high  commendation ;  it  is  an  excellent  introduction  to  the 
comparative  study  of  God's  Word,  in  these  three  languages  Kith  ivhich  an 
ordinary  English  student  is  uudnly,  if  not  entirely  concerned" — Guakdian. 


BY  J.  T.  ABDY,  LL.D. 

Regiut  Profeiaor  of  Civil  Law  in  the  Unicersily  of  Cambridge. 

A  Historical  Sketch  of  Civil  Procedure   among   the 

Romans.  Crown  Svo.  cloth,  is.  &d. 


PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  15 

BY  DAVID  MASSON,  M.A., 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in  Vniversily  College,  London. 

Essays,  Biographical  and  Critical :   chiefly  on  English 

Poets.  8vo,  cloth,  12s.  M. 


"  Mr.  Masson  hat  succeeded  in  producing  a  series  of  criticisms  in  relation  to 
creative  literalvre,  which  are  satisfactory  as  well  as  subtile,- — which  are  not  only 
ingeniotis,  but  which  possess  the  rarer  recommendation  of  being  usvally  just  . . 
But  we  pass  over  these  Essays  to  that  which  is  in  the  main  a  new,  and,  according 
to  our  judgment,  an  excellent  biographical  sketch  of  Chatterton.  .  .  This  '  Story 
of  the  Tear  1770,'  as  Mr.  Masson  entitles  it,  stands  for  nearly  200  pages  in  his 
volume,  and  contains,  by  preference,  the  fruits  of  his  judgment  and  research  in 
an  elaborated  and  discursive  memoir.  .  .  Its  merit  consists  in  the  illustration 
afforded  by  Mr.  Masson^ s  inquiries  into  contemporary  circumstances,  and  the 
clear  traces  thus  obtained  of  ChattcrtoiC s  London  life  -and  experience.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Masson  unravels  this  mystery  very  completely  ^ — Times. 

*'  No  one  who  reads  a  single  page  of  Mr.  Masson  will  be  likely  to  content  himself 
with  that  alone.  He  will  see  at  a  glance  thai  he  has  come  across  a  man  endowed 
with  a  real  love  of  poetry  ;  a  clear,  fresh,  happy  insight  into  the  poefs  heart ; 
and  a  great  knowledge  of  the  historical  connexion  of  its  more  marked  epochs  in 
England.  He  has  distinct  and  pleasant  thoughts  to  utter  ;  he  is  not  above  doing 
his  very  best  to  utter  them  well ;  there  is  nothing  slovenly  or  clumsy  or  untidy 
in  t/ieir  expression  ;  they  leap  along  in  a  bright  stream,  bubbling,  sparkling,  mid 
transparent." — The  Guakdian. 

"  Worthy  of  being  ranked  among  the  very  foremost  of  their  class.  .  .  The  longest 
and  finest  composition  of  the  work — a  gem  in  literary  biography — is  its  '  Chat' 
terton,aStoryoftheYearYnO.^  .  .  .This  singularly  interesting  and  powerful 
biography  fills  up  this  sad  outline  as  it  never  was  filled  up  before." 

Edinburgh  Witjsess  (edited  by  Hugh  Miller). 

*'  Hi*  life  of  Chatterton  is  a  complete,  symmetrical  and  marvellous  work  of  art 
...  0  classical  biography." — The  Glasgow  Commonwealth. 

"  WUl  secure  both  attention  and  respect." — Examinee, 

"  Very  admirable  criticisms,  which  show  not  only  a  thorough  acquaintance  with 
the  works  he  criticises,  but  a  deep  sense  of  poetic  beauty." — Daily  Kews. 

"  We  know  not  where  to  find  a  larger  amount  of  discriminating,  far-seeing,  and 
genial  criticism  within  the  same  cotnpass." — British  Quarterly  IIeview. 

"  Here  is  a  biography  {the  essay  on  Chatterton)  told  without  exaggeration, 
without  unwarranted  use  of  hypothetic  incidents,  yet  surpassing  the  most 
highly-wrought  fiction  in  its  power  over  our  emotions." 

The  Westminster  Review. 

"  Not  only  a  series  of  biographical  studies,  hut  in  some  sort  a  philosophical  history 
of  English  poetry  from  Shakspeare  to  Alexander  Smith." — The  Leader. 

"  Distinguished  by  a  remarkable  power  of  analysis,  a  clear  statement  of  the  actual 
facts  on  which  speculatioti  is  based,  and  an  appropriate  beauty  of  language. 
These  Essays  should  be  popular  with  serious  men." — The  Atuen^um. 


16  NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 

THE  WORKS  OF 

FREDERICK  DENISON  MAURICE,  M.A., 

Chaplain  of  Lincoln's  Inn. 

Expository  Works  on  the  Holy  Scripture: — 

1.  The  Patriarchs  and  Lawgivers  of  the  Old  Testa- 

ment.     Second  Edition.  Crown  8vo.  cloth,  6«. 

This  Volume  contains  Discourses  on  The  Pentateuch,  Joshua,  Judges, 
and  the  beginning  of  the  First  Book  of  Samuel. 

2.  The  Prophets  and  Kings  of  the  Old  Testament. 

Second  Edition.  Crown  8vo.  cloth,  \0s.  Gd. 

This  Volume  contains  Discourses  on  Samuel  I.  and  II.,  Kings  I.  and  II. 
Amos,  Joel,  Hosea,  Isaiah,  Micah,  Nahum,  Habbakuk,  Jeremiah, 
and  Ezekiel. 

3.  The  Unity  of  the  New  Testament.      8vo.  cloth,  14*. 

This  Volume  contains  Discourses  on  the  Gospels  of  St.  Matthew, 
St.  Mark,  and  St.  Luke ;  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles ;  the  Epistles  of 
St.  James,  St.  Jude,  St.  Peter,  and  St.  Paul. 

4.  The  Gospel  of  St.  John.     A  Series  of  Discourses. 

Second  Edition,  Crown  Svo.  cloth,  10*.  Qd. 

5.  The  Epistles  of  St,  John.     A  Series  of  Lectures  on 

Christian  Ethics.  Crown  Svo.  cloth,  7s.  Qd. 

Expository  Works  on  the  Prayer-Book: — 

1.  The  Ordinary  Services.     A  Series  of  Sermons. 

Second  Edition.  Ecap.  Svo.  cloth,  5*.  6d. 

2.  The  Church  a  Earaily.     Twelve  Sermons  on  the 

Occasional  Services.  Ecap.  8vo.  cloth,  4*.  6d. 

The   Doctrine   of  Sacrifice    deduced   from   the   Scrip- 
tures, Crown  Svo.  cloth,  7s.  Qd. 

Learning  and  Working.     The  Rehgion  of  Rome,  and 
its  Influence  on  Modern  CiviUzation. 

In  1  vol.    Crown  Svo.  cloth,  5*. 


PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  17 

MR.  MAURICE'S  WORKS-continued. 

Ecclesiastical  History.  8vo.  cloth,  10«.  Gd. 

Theological  Essays.  Second  Edition.  Crown  8vo.  lOs.  6d. 

Christmas  Day,  and  other  Sermons.     8vo.  cloth,  lOs.  6d. 

The   Religions  of  the  World  in  their  Relations  to 

Christianity.  Third  Edition.    Fop.  Svo.  cloth,  5*. 

Contents:  Mahometanism — Hindooism — Buddhism — The  Old  Per- 
sian Faith — The  Egyptian — The  Greek — The  Roman — The  Gothic 
— The  Relation  between  Christianity  and  Hindooism,  &c. 

The   Lord's   Prayer.         Third  Edition.    Ecp.  Svo.  cloth,  2«.  &d. 

The  Sabbath,  and  other  Sermons.     Ecp.  Svo.  cloth,  2s.  Gd. 
Law  on  the  Eable  of  the  Bees.         Fcp.  Svo.  cloth,  is.  6d. 


The  Worship  of  the  Church.     A   Witness   for   the 
Redemption  of  the  World. 

The  Word   "Eternal"   and  the  Punishment  of  the 

Wicked.    Third  Edition.     Is. 

Eternal  Life  and  Eternal  Death.     1*.  6d. 

The  Name  Protestant,  and  the  English  Bishopric  at 

Jerusalem.      Second  Edition.     3*. 

Right    and    Wrong    Methods   of    Supporting   Pro- 
testantism.   1*. 

The  Duty  of  a  Protestant  in  the  Oxford  Election. 

1847.     Is. 

The  Case  of  Queen's  College,  London,     is.  Gd, 

Death  and  Life.      In  Memoriam  C.B.M.     Is. 

Administrative  Reform.     M. 


^8  NEW  "WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 


MANUALS  FOR  THEOLOGICAL  STUDENTS, 

Uniformly  Printed  and  Boimd, 
NOW    IN    COURSE    OF    PUBLICATION. 


It  is  now  about  five  years  since  the  Prospectus  of  this  Series  was 
first  issued.  Four  volumes  have  now  been  published,  and  several 
others  are  in  an  advanced  state.  The  reception  which  the  volumes 
already  published  have  met  with,  has  fully  justified  the  antici- 
pation with  which  the  -  Publishers  commenced  the  Series,  and 
warrants  them  in  the  belief,  that  their  aim  of  supplying  books 
"  concise,  comprehensive,  and  accurate,"  *'  convenient  for  the 
professional  Student  and  interesting  to  the  general  reader,"  has 
been  not  unsuccessfully  fulfilled. 

The  following  paragraphs  appeared  in  the  original  Prospectus,  and  may 
be  here  conveniently  reproduced  :—' 

"  The  Authors  beiiig  Clergymen  of  the  English  Church,  and  the  Series 
*i;  0  't'^^"?  designed  primarily  for  the  use  of  Candidates  for  office  in 
her  Ministry,  the  books  will  seek  to  be  in  accordance  with  her 
spirit  and  principles  ;  and  as  the  spirit  and  principles  of  the 
English  Church  teach  charity  and  truth,  "so  in  treating  of  the 
opinions  and  principles  of  other  communions,  every  effort  will 
be  made  to  avoid  acrimony  or  misrepresentation. 

"  It  will  be  the  aim  of  the  writers  throughout  the  Series  to  avoid  all 
dogmatic  expression  of  doubtful  or  individual  opinions." 

THE   FOLLOWING   FOUR  VOLUMES  ABE   NOW   READY  : — 


EUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  U 

THEOLOGICAL  MANUALS-continued. 

1 .  A  General  View  of  the  History  of  the  Canon  of  the 

New  Testament  during  the  riRST  FOUR  CENTURIES. 
By  Brooke  Eoss  Westcott,  M.A.,  Assistant  Master  of  Harrow 
School,  formerly  Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 

Crown  8vo.  cloth,  12s.  Qd. 

OPINIONS   OF    THE   PRESS. 


"  A  icork  whiek  forms  one  of  the  inealuable  series  of  Theological  Manuals  now  in 
course  of  publication  at  CamhridgeP 

British  and  Fokeign  Evangelical  Review. 

"  Tlie  Author  is  one  of  those  who  are  teaching  us  that  it  is  possible  to  rifle  the 
storehouses  of  German  theology,  without  bearing  away  the  taint  of  their  atmo- 
sphere :  and  to  recognise  the  value  of  their  accumulated  treasures,  and  even 
track  the  vagaries  of  tlieir  theoretic  ingenuity ,  without  abandoning  iti  the  pursuit 
the  clear  sight  and  sound  feeling  of  English  common  sense  ....  It  is  by  far 
the  best  and  most  complete  book  of  the  kind;  and  we  should  be  glad  to  see  it 
well  placed  on  the  lists  of  our  examining  chaplains^ — Guardian. 

"Learned,  dispassionate,  discriminating,  worthy  of  his  subject  and  the  present 
state  of  Christian  Literature  in  relation  to  it."—  British  Quarterly. 

"  To  the  student  in  Theology  it  will  prove  an  admirable  Text-Book :  and  to  all 
others  who  have  any  curiosity  on  the  subject  it  will  be  satisfactory  as  one  of  the 
most  useful  and  instructive  pieces  of  history  which  the  records  of  the  Church 
supply." — London  Quarterly. 

"  The  Author  carries  into  the  execution  of  his  design  a  careful  and  painstaking 
scholarship  ....  Considered  as  a  list  q/"  Testimonials  in  favour  of  the  canonical 
writings,  our  Author's  work  deserves  the  praise  of  great  diligence  and  manifest 
conscientiousness." — National  Review. 

"  If  the  rest  of  the  series  of  nurttuals,  of  which  the  present  volume  forms  apart,  are 
as  ably  executed,  the  Christian  public  will  be  greatly  indebted  to  the  projectors 
of  the  plan." — Literary  Churchman. 

"  There  is  nothing,  so  far  as  we  know,  resembling  it  in  the  English  tongue  .  .  .  We 
have  here  presented  to  us  a  striking  and  luminous  view  of  a  very  broad  and 
comprehensive  subject,  marked  throughout  by  rich  and  copious  erudition. 
A  volume  which  we  consider  a  most  valuable  addition  to  tlie  literature  of 
Revelation.  Scripture  Expositors,  of  whatever  name,  will  acknotdedge  that  they 
have  been  laid  under  deep  obligation  by  the  work  of  Mr.  Westcott." 

British  Banner. 

"  The  conception  of  tlie  work,  and  the  discrimination  and  learning  with  which  it  is 
executed,  adapt  it  most  thoroughly  to  the  present  state  and  forms  of  controversy 
■  OH  the  subject  to  which  it  relates." — Nonconformist. 


20  NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 

THEOLOGICAL  MANUALS-continued. 

2.  A  History  of  the  Christian  Church  from  the  Seventh 

Century  to  the  Reformation.  By  Charles  Hardwick,  M.A., 
Fellow  of  St.  Catharine's  College,  Divinity  Lecturer  of  King's 
College,  and  Christian  Advocate  in  the  University  of  Cambridge, 
Author  of  "  A  History  of  the  XXXIX  Articles."  With  Four 
Maps  constructed  for  this  Work  by  A.  Keith  Johnston. 

Crown  8vo.  cloth,  10«.  6rf. 

OFINIOKS  OP   THE   PRESS. 


'  It  is  full  in  references  and  authority,  systematic  and  formal  in  division,  with 
enough  of  life  in  the  style  to  counteract  the  dryness  inseparahle  from  its  lirevity. 
and  exhibiting  tlie  results  rather  than  the  piinciples  of  investigation.  JIr. 
Hardwick  is  to  be  congratulated  on  tKe  successful  achievement  of  a  difficult 
task." — Christian  Reioimbrakcee. 

'  He  has  bestowed  patient  and  extensive  reading  on  the  collection  of  his  materials  ; 
he  has  selected  them  with  judgment ;  and  he  presents  them  in  an  equable  and 
compact  style" — Spectator. 

'  This  book  is  one  of  a  promised  series  of  '  Theological  Manuals.'  In  one 
respect,  it  may  he  taken  as  a  sign  of  the  times.  It  is  a  small  unpretending 
volume  in  appearance,  but  it  is  based  on  learning  enough  to  have  sufficed,  half  a 
century  since,  for  the  ground  of  two  or  three  quartos,  or  at  least  for  several 
portly  octavos.  For  its  purpose  it  is  admirable,  giving  you  a  careful  and  intel- 
ligent summary  of  events,  and  at  the  same  time  indicating  the  best  sources  of 
information  for  the  further  guidance  of  the  student.  Among  the  authorities 
thus  referred  to,  we  find  the  most  modern  as  well  as  the  most  ancietU,  the  con- 
tinental as  well  as  the  English." — British  Quarterly. 

'//  is  distinguished  by  the  same  diligent  research  and  conscientious  acknowledg- 
ment of  authorities  which  procured  for  Mr.  Hardwick's  '  History  of  the 
Articles  of  Religion'  such  a  favourable  reception." — Notes  and  Queries. 

*  To  a  good  method  and  good  materials  Mr.  Hardwick  adds  that  great  virtue, 
a  perfectly  transparent  style.  We  did  not  expect  to  find  great  literary  qualities 
in  such  a  manual,  but  we  have  found  them;  we  should  be  saiisjied  in  this 
respect  with  conciseness  and  intelligibility  ;  but  while  this  book  has  both,  it  is 
also  elegant,  highly  finished,  and  highly  interesting." — NoNCONfORMlST. 

'  As  a  manual  for  the  student  of  Ecclesiastical  History  in  the  Middle  Ages,  we 
know  no  English  work  which  can  be  compared  to  Mr.  Hardwick's  book.  It 
has  two  great  merits,  that  it  constantly  refers  the  reader  to  the  authorities,  both 
original  and  critical,  on  which  its  statements  are  founded;  and  that  it  pre- 
serves a  j  list  proportion  in  dealing  with  various  subjects." — Guardian. 


PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  21 


THEOLOGICAL  MANUALS-continued. 

3.    A  History  of  the  Christian   Church  during  the 
Reformation.   By  CHARLES  hardwick,  m.a. 

Crown  8vo.  cloth,  10s.  &d. 


OPINIONS  OP  THE  PRESS. 


"  Tie  whole  volume  displays  a  profusion  of  learning,  great  accuracy  and  honesty 
in  collecting  and  collating  authorities,  a  clear  as  well  as  a  concise  narrative  of 
events  ;  and  it  always  refers  to  the  authorities  on  which  the  history  is  grounded." 

Chrtstian  Remembrancer. 

"  Exhibits  a  deep  comprehension  and  a  firm  grasp  of  his  theme,  with  the  ease  and 

mastery  in  treatment  which  such  qualities  getierally  impart The  utility 

of  Mr.  Hardwick's  work  consists  tn  bringing  the  greater  and  minor  histories 
connected  with  the  Reformation  into  a  single  volume  of  compact  shape,  as  well  as 
presenting  their  broad  features  to  the  student.  The  merit  of  the  history  con- 
sists in  the  penetration  with  which  the  opinions  of  the  age,  the  traits  of  its 
remarkable  men,  and  the  intellectual  character  of  the  history,  are  perceived,  and 
the  force  with  which  they  are  presented." — Spectator. 

"  A  more  satisfactory  manual  than  England  has  hitherto  produced. He  ha* 

laboured  learnedly  and  diligenUy,  at  first  hand,  among  the  sources  and  autho- 
rities for  the  ecclesiastical  history  of  the  period  of  which  he  writes ;  and  has 
produced  a  work  really  original,  as  far  as  such  a  work  can  be ;  independent 
in  its  judgments ;  written  with  taste  and  feeling ;  and  offering,  in  its  large 
body  of  notes,  aids  and  guidance  to  the  fullest  investigation  the  subject  can  pos- 
sibly receive." — Noncon  formi  st. 

"  His  readers  will  find  him  a  lively,  a  luminous,  and  interesting  companion,  a* 
well  as  a  generally  trustworthy  guide." — British  Banner. 

"He  enters  fairly  into  the  questions  of  which  he  speaks,  and  does  not  aliempi 
to  evade  their  difficidly  by  vague  statements  .  .  .  We  cordially  recommend 
this  work  to  those  who  desire  an  orderly  and  lucid  summary  of  the  leading 
events  of  the  Keformation  .  .  .  We  may  also  observe,  that  Mr.  Hardwick 
has  availed  himself  of  the  latest  German  authorities." 

Literary  Churchman. 

"  The  style  is  lucid  and  the  plan  comprehensive.  The  facts  are  well  arranged, 
and  their  relations  ably  brought  out  .  .  .  Will  be  esteemed  by  most  student* 
as  judicious,  helpful,  and  suggestive." — Evangelical  Bjiviev. 

"  He  writes  from  genuine  and  independent  sources.  Though  his  work  is  short, 
it  partakes  in  no  respect  of  the  character  of  a  compilation." — The  Press. 

"  It  is  impossible  to  speak  too  highly  of  the  extensive  and  careful  retearch  the 
book  everywhere  manifest*" — Baptist  Maoazinz. 


22  NEW  WORKS  AND  NEW  EDITIONS, 

THEOLOGICAL  MANUALS-continued. 

4.    A   History   of    the    Book    of    Common   Prayer, 

together  with  a  Eationale  of  the  several  OflSces.     By  the  Rev. 
I'rancis  Procter,  M.A.,  Vicar  of  Witton,   Norfolk,   formerly 
Fellow  of  St.  Catharine's  College,   Cambridge.     Third  Edition, 
revised  and  enlarged.     Crown  8vo.  cloth,  10*.  6^?. 
"Mr.  Procter's  '  History  of  the  Book  of  Comraon  Prayer'  is  hy  far  the  best 

commentary  extant Not  only  do  the  present  illustrations  embrace  the 

tohole  range  of  original  sources  indica^fed  by  Mr.  Paxmer,  but  Mr.  Procter 
compares  the  present  Book  of  Common  Prayer  with  the  Scotch  and  American 
forms ;  and  he  frequently  sets  oat  in  full  the  Sarum  Offices.  As  a  manual  of 
pxtensive  information,  historical  and  ritual,  imbued  with  sound  Church  princi- 
ples, we  are  entirely  satisfied  with  Mr.  Procter's  important  volume" 

Christian  Uemembrancer. 
"It  is  a  restime  of  all  that  has  been  done  tn  the  way  of  investigation  in  reference  to 

the  Prayer-Boole" — Athen^um. 
"  We  can  have  little  doubt  that  Mr.  Procter's  History  of  our  Liturgy  will  soon 
supersede  the  well-hiown  work  of  Wiieatly,  and  become  a  much-used  hand- 
book beyond  the  circuits  of  the  University  for  the  more  immediate  use  of  which 
it  has  been  ^iroduced."- —  Notes  and  Queries. 
"  Although  very  decidedly  anti-Roman  in  its  tone,  we  gladly  accept  it  as  a  substitute 
for  the  dull  and  dreary  dogmatism  of  Wheatly.  It  presents,  in  a  popular  and 
agreeable  narrative,  the  history  of  those  variations  to  which  so  much  attention 
has  been  directed  during  the  late  eventful  controversies  ;  and  while  it  contains  a 
very  careful,  learned  and  scholarlike  exposition  oftliese  changes,  it  also  furnishes 
a  most  valuable  commentary  on  the  successive  texts  of  the  formularies  themselves, 
as  they  are  exhibited  either  in  the  original  editions,  or  in  the  useful  manuals  of 
BuLLEV  and  Keeling." — Dublin  Review  (Roman  Catholic). 
"  We  can  speak  with  jnst  praise  of  this  compendious  but  comprehensive  volume.  It 
appears  to  be  compiled  with  great  care  and  judgment,  and  has  profited  largely  by 
the  accumulated  materials  collected  by  the  learning  and  research  of  the  last  fifty 
years.  It  is  a  manual  of  great  value  to  the  student  of  Ecclesiastical  History  and 
of  almost  equal  interest  to  every  admirer  of  the  Liturgy  and  Services  of  the 
English  Church." — London  Quarterly  Review. 
"  It  is  indeed  a  complete  and  fairly -written  history  of  the  Liturgy  ;  and  from  the 
dispassionate  way  in  which  disputed  points  are  touched  on,  wilt  prove  to  many 
troubled  consciences  what  ought  to  be  known  to  them,  viz. : — that  they  may, 
without  fear  of  compromising  the  principles  of  evangelical  truth,  give  their  assent 
and  consent  to  the  contents  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  Mr.  Procter  has 
done  a  great  service  to  the  Church  by  this  admirable  digest." 

Church  or  England  Quarterly, 
others  ark  in  progress,  and  will  bk  announced  in  due  time. 


PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.        ^ 

CLASS  BOOKS  FOR  COLLEGES  AND  SCHOOLS. 

Mb.  Airy's  (Astronomer  Eoyal)  Mathematical  Tracts. 

Foui-th  Edition.  [In  the  Press. 

Professor  Boole  on  Differential  Equations.  [Preparing. 

Mr,  Cooper's  Geometrical  Conic  Sections.  [In  the  Press. 

Mr.  Drew's  Geometrical  Conic  Sections.  4s.  6rf. 

Mr.  Godfrat's  Treatise  on  the  Lunar  Theory.  5s.  6d. 

Mr.  Grant's  Plane  Astronomy.  6s. 

Mr.  Hemming's  Differential  and  Integral  Calculus. 

Second  Edition.     9s. 
Mr.  Morgan's  Mathematical  Problems  and  Answers. 

[In  the  Press. 
Mr.  Parkinson's  Elementary  Mechanics.  9s-  ^d. 

Mr.  Parkinson's  Elementary  Treatise  on  Optics.  [PrepaHng. 
Mr.  Phear's  Elementary  Hydrostatics.  5«-  ^d.- 

Mr.  Puckle's  (Head  Master  of  Windermere  College)  Elementary: 
Conic  Sections.  Second  Edition.    7s.  Qd. 

Mr.  Barnard  Smith's  Arithmetic  and  Algebra. 

Fifth  Edition.     10s.  6rf. 
Mr.  Barnard  Smith's  Arithmetic  for  Schools. 

New  Edition.    4s.  6rf. 
Mr.  Barnard  Smith's  Key  to  the  above.  8s.  Qd. 

Mr.  Barnard  Smith's  Mechanics  and  Hydrostatics. 

[Prepanng, 
Mr.  Snowball's  Plane  and  Spherical  Trigonometry. 

Ninth  Edition.     7s.  6d. 
Mr.  Snowball's  Introduction  to  Plane  Trigonometry. 

Second  Edition.     6s^ 
Mr.  Snowball's  Cambridge  Course  of  Mechanics  and  Hydro- 
statics. Foui-th  Edition.    5s. 

Prof.  Tait's  and  Mr.  Steele's  "Treatise  on  Dynamics.  lOs.  6d. 
Mb.  Todhunter's  Treatise  on  Differential  and  Elements 

of  Integral  Calculus.  Second  Edition.    lOs.  6rf.' 

Mr.  Todhunter's  Treatise   on   Integral  Calculus  and  its 

Applications.  .  lOs.  Qd. 

Mr.  Todhunter's  Analytical  Statics.  10.?.  M. 

Mr.  Todhunter's  Conic  Sections.  lOs.-6<7. 

Mr.  Todhunter's  Treatise  on  Algebra.  [/"  the  Press. 


24  PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 

CLASS  BOOKS— continued. 
Mr.  Todhunter's  Algebra  for  Beginners.  [Preparing. 

Prop.  Wilson's  Treatise  on  Dynamics.  9s.  6rf. 

Cambridge   Senate-House   Problems,    1848   to   1*851.     With 

Solutions  by  Messrs.  Ferrers  and  Jackson.  15s.  Qd. 

Cambridge  Senate-House  Eiders,  ]848  to  1851.     With  Soiu. 

tions  by  Mr.  Jameson.  7s.  6rf. 

Cambridge  Senate-House  Problems  and  Riders,  1854.     With 

Solutions  by  Messrs.  Walton  &  Mackenzie.  10s.  Qd. 

Cambridge  Senate-House  Problems,  and  Eiders,  1857.  With 

Solutions  by  Messrs.  Campion  and  Walton.  8s.  Qd. 


Mr.  Drake's  EumeNIDES  op  .^SCHYLUS.  With  English  Notes.  7s.  Qd. 
Mr.  Drake's  Demosthenes  de  Corona,  with  English  Notes.  5s. 
Mr.  Frost's  Thucydides,  Book  VI.  With  English  Notes.  7s.  6d. 
Dr.  Humphreys'  Exercitationes  Iambics  ;  or,  Exercises  in 
Greek   Iambic   Verse.      With  Rules.     Second  Edition.      5s.  6f?. 

Mr.  Mayor's  Juvenal  for  Schools.    With  English  Notes.  lOs.  Qd. 

Mr.  Merivale's  SaLLUST  for  Schools.      With  English  Notes.     6». 

Mr.  Thring's  Construing  Book.  2s.  6d. 

Mr.  Wright's  (Head  Master  of  Sutton  Coldfield  School) 
Hellenica  ;  a  First  Greek  Construing  Book.  Second 
Edition.     With  English  Notes  and  Vocabulary.  3s.  6d. 

Mr.  Wright's  Help  to  Latin  Grammar.  4s.  M. 

Mr,  Wright's  Seven  Kings  op  Eome  ;  a  First  Latin  Con- 
struing Book.      Secmid  Edition.    With  English  Notes.  3s. 

Mr.  Wright's  Vocabulary  and  Exercises  por  the  above.  2s.  M. 


Mr.  Thring's  (Head  Master  of  Uppingham  School)  Elements 
op  Grammar.  New  Edition.     2s, 

Mr,  Thring's  Child's  Grammar.  New  Edition,    is. 

Mr.  Parminter's  Materials  for  English  Grammar.       3s.  M. 

Mr.  Eamsay's  Manual  on  the  Church  Catechism.         3s.  Qd. 

Mr.  Swainson's  Handbook  to  Butler's  Analogy.  2s. 

Mr.  Crosse's  Analysis  of  Paley's  Evidences.  3s.  Qd. 

Mr.  Simpson's  Epitome  of  Church  History.     New  Edition.   5s. 

De."  Wilson's  Five  Gateways  of  Knowledge. 

Cloth,  2s.  Qd. ;  paper,  Is. 

B.  CLAY,  PRINTER,  BREAD  STREET  HILL. 


U  s'o  e^ 


[ij;  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  f 


A    000  670  362    3 

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